Ben Rowe looks good to win 3rd PASS title

The task doesn’t seem that difficult by any stretch of the imagination.

All Ben Rowe of Turner has to do to claim his third Pro All Stars Series points championship in four years is finish in the top 15 in Saturday’s night’s 150-lap finale at Star Speedway in Epping, N.H.

But the 30-year-old Rowe isn’t going to sit back and play it safe.

“I think you can be too cautious,” said Rowe. “If you try to hang back and do stuff you don’t normally do, that can get into trouble. I’m going to do what we’ve been doing to get us to this point and then we’ll go from there.”

Ben Rowe has 3,450 points and his closest pursuer is his father, Mike, who has 3,420. Farmington’s Cassius Clark is third with 3,414 and defending champ Johnny Clark is fourth with 3,386 points.

Hebron’s Alan Wilson is fifth with 3,262 and will be crowned the series’ rookie of the year this weekend.

Ben Rowe won eight races when he claimed the 2003 points championship and had five in 2002.

He has four wins this season, prompting him to say, “It feels like we haven’t been as good this year [as in past years]. It all boils down to me, my father, and the two Clarks, and the difference is they’ve had one more mulligan than I’ve had. They have fallen out of one more race than I have and that’s the big difference right now.”

Johnny Clark lost his chance to challenge for the title when he had car trouble last weekend at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough and finished 31st.

Ben Rowe said the turning point for him occurred before the Sept. 4 race at Canaan Fair Speedway (N.H.).

He said his car just hadn’t been as good as he wanted it to be.

“We had been searching all year [for the problem] and we [finally] found out stuff about the car. We made a sway bar adjustment. We did a couple things different and that pointed us in the right direction,” said Rowe, who won that Sept. 4 race and hasn’t finished out of the top five in the ensuing four races with two seconds, a fourth, and a fifth.

Rowe said he will be looking for a top-10 finish and hopes to “start the race up front.”

That will give him a better chance to stay out of trouble.

Although he will probably win the points title, he feels his father has been the top driver on the tour all year.

“He’s still the best driver in the Northeast,” said Ben. “Everybody wrote him off for a few years. But his equipment wasn’t that good. Now he has top-notch equipment and he can win at any track, anywhere, any time.”

He said Star Speedway is a quarter-mile track that is “pretty flat and pretty round.”

“It’s a neat little place if you’re decent. It’s small, so you can get into trouble,” said Rowe.

Speedway 95 races Sunday

There will be a special season-ending race card at Hermon’s Speedway 95 on Sunday beginning at 2 p.m.

There will be a 75-lap Super Street feature which will pay the winner $1,000; 50-lap Limited Sportsman and Strictly Street races that will pay the winners $1,000 and $500, respectively; and a 35-lap Sport Four race that will put a $350 check into the winner’s pocket.

Drivers from other tracks are asked to bring their rulebooks and all drivers must use Speedway 95 tires. Any questions on the rules may be directed to Wayne Parritt at 546-7696 or 546-2912.