PORTLAND – A member of the Rowe family has won the last three TD Banknorth Oxford 250 stock car races at Oxford Plains Speedway.

Turner’s Mike Rowe won the TD Banknorth Oxford 250 last year after his son, Ben, had won the previous two.

Mike Rowe has won a total of three 250s.

They hope to be in the thick of things again Sunday in a star-studded field that will include the winners of the last two Nextel Cup races, Denny Hamlin (Pocono) and Kyle Busch (New Hampshire International Speedway), along with Nextel Cup rookie J.J. Yeley and Newburgh’s Ricky Craven, who has 278 Nextel Cup races and two wins to his credit.

Craven won the 1991 250.

The Rowes were among the drivers and other race personnel on hand at a press conference/luncheon Wednesday at Verrillo’s Restaurant and Convention Center.

“We’ve got a new car that Jeff Taylor ran in one race so we ought to be in good shape,” said Mike Rowe.

Mercer’s Taylor owns Distance Racing Products in Fairfield and builds race cars.

Although Mike Rowe won’t have much seat time before Sunday’s heat races leading up to the feature, he isn’t concerned.

Taylor has been driving Taylor cars for years “and they’re basically all the same. We’ll be OK.”

Rowe has had a strange year.

He has just one top-three finish and two top-fives in six races in the PASS North Super Late Models tour but is second in points. He leads the PASS South tour in points thanks to two wins and five top-fives in five races.

“We’ve run better down south,” said Rowe, who has Kyle Busch as a teammate for the second year.

Ben Rowe said he will be driving a Chevy Monte Carlo that overheated in a PASS race at Oxford earlier this season. He finished 34th.

“We had a brand new car. We were trying to get it ready for the 250. We probably shouldn’t have been there with it,” said Ben Rowe.

“We got that all fixed. We’ve tested with it. We’ll be all right,” said Ben Rowe, who has a pair of top-threes in the PASS North tour and is running seventh in points.

Ben Rowe is teamed up with Denmark’s Travis Khiel.

“Travis ran real strong in the second PASS race at Oxford [finishing second],” said Ben Rowe. “That’s the good thing about having a teammate. I’m going to copy his notes and go with what he had up there that day [for a setup].”

Mike Rowe was one of the favorites when OPS owner Bill Ryan polled the drivers during the press conference.

Kyle Busch, who dominated last year’s race only to wind up finishing sixth when a lug nut came loose, was another popular choice as was Taylor, who is leading the pro stock points at OPS this season.

Busch is determined to make his way to Victory Lane this year according to SP2 Motorsports Team co-owner Steve Perry, whose team is supplying the cars for Mike Rowe and Busch.

“Kyle wants to win this race bad. He wants to take the hardware back to North Carolina,” said Perry, who owns the team with Scott Poulin.

Traction compound is a hit

In an attempt to create a second racing groove to promote more passing, Ryan has had his crew apply a traction compound to the outside groove this season.

The bottom groove has always been the faster one.

“Bill has done a magnificent job with that,” said Otisfield’s Gary Drew, who won the 2001 Oxford 250.

“It’s definitely helping,” said Ben Rowe. “The [weekly] Saturday night racing has gotten a lot better [because of it]. The bottom is so fast, it takes people a little while to get to the outside. After about 25-30 laps, cars start passing on the outside and it has a good groove.

“On a 50-lap night race, you don’t really see a whole lot of that because everybody on the bottom is so fast. But in a long race like this, you’re going to see a lot of cars up on the outside,” said Rowe. “The bottom will start slowing up and the good guys will start heading to the outside.”

Bill Whorff Jr. of Topsham, an OPS regular, said the track is “much more racier. It equals out the competition. There is some racing for position instead of just a train [in the low groove]. It’s a lot more fun now.”

Cassius Clark of Farmington felt the outside groove “wasn’t so bad last year” and the compound has made it even better.

“It’s going to be a great race,” said Clark, who has four wins on the PASS North tour this season.

Cup drivers are welcome

The Maine drivers enjoy competing against the Nextel Cup drivers even if it may hurt their chances of winning.

“They’re all welcome. We know what we can do to win that race,” said Drew. “To have these guys come up, it’s more prestigious to beat them. To be able to say we’re all using the same equipment and we beat these guys. It means a lot.”