Clark roaring through PASS Farmington native making use of engine, weight rule changes

Two races. Two wins.

It is just the way you would want to start a season and that’s exactly what Cassius Clark has done on the Pro All-Stars Series North tour.

The 24-year-old Farmington native followed up his season-opening win in the New England Dodge Dealers 150 at Oxford Plains Speedway with a trip to Victory Lane at Hermon’s Speedway 95 on Sunday in the PASS 150.

“I’ve been pretty fortunate,” said Clark. “We worked hard all winter long. We ran a race down south in Lakeland [Fla.] and I learned a lot there.”

Clark and his E.J. Prescott/Chapman Trucking team took that knowledge to Hickory, N.C., for the PASS South Easter Bunny 150 where he actually led the race only to have a broken axle end his day.

He said the encouraging runs in Florida and North Carolina gave him and his team confidence and it has snowballed.

“Everything is going our way right now,” said Clark. “The car [Ford Taurus] has been excellent ever since Lakeland. It was off just a little bit in Lakeland.”

Clark has improved every year during his PASS career.

He won three races last season and had 10 top-three finishes in 17 races. He wound up second in points behind Ben Rowe of Turner.

He finished seventh in points in 2004, 11th in 2003, and 13th in his first season in 2002.

“We’ve been strong the last three years. We should have won more races than we have, but something would happen,” said Clark.

He has his sights set on the points championship this season.

“We felt we could have won it last year,” said Clark, who used to drive in the Legends car series. “We’d like to win some more races this year and run some of the PASS South races.”

One of the keys to his team’s start has been the ability to adapt to the new rules package put forth by PASS founder and president Tom Mayberry.

They have replaced a four-barrel engine with a two-barrel engine, which has enabled them to take advantage of weight breaks specified by the new rules package.

The package has angered some of the other PASS drivers who are still using the four-barrel engines.

“Cassius is a good friend of mine, but he has an unfair advantage,” said 2004 PASS champion Johnny Clark of Farmingdale.

Under the new rules, a car with a two-barrel engine can weigh 150 pounds less than a car with a four-barrel engine to make up for generating less horsepower. That was changed to 100 pounds for the Speedway 95 race. Two-barrel cars can also have 58 percent of the car’s total weight on the left side, while the cars with the four-barrel engines can have only 56 percent of their weight on the left side.

The extra weight on the left side gives the two-barrel cars more speed in the corners.

PASS points champ Ben Rowe said something has to be changed or Cassius Clark will blow away the rest of the field.

“I’m not knocking Cassius. He stepped up to the plate while we were sitting back waiting to see what happened. He was willing to go out and spend the money [to change his engine] and has won a couple of races because of it,” said Ben Rowe.

Rowe said the situation can be remedied by allowing the four-barrel cars to carry 58 percent of their car weight on the left side. He explained that the PASS South tour allows 58 percent of the car weight on the left side so the PASS North cars could run races in that tour “and support [Mayberry’s] tour” without having to make any major adjustments to their cars.

Another option would be to eliminate the overall weight break.

Mayberry said there will be “major changes” and they will be announced on Monday.

“We got caught with our pants down,” admitted Mayberry. “We tried to make the two-barrel cars more competitive so we could attract guys with lower-dollar teams. But there were some loopholes that I missed.”

He said they won’t go as far as to allow 58 percent weight on the left side of the four-barrel cars, but he is “real confident” they can remedy the situation and said cars with two-barrel engines won’t be receiving the same weight breaks they currently enjoy.

Mayberry said he and other members of his staff have talked to most of the drivers in the last couple of days to get their input.