Former Champ Mike O’Sullivan Returns To Granite State Pro Stocks

Story By: MATTHEW WIERNASZ / RPW – SPRINGFIELD, MA – Mike O’Sullivan returned to the Granite State Pro Stock Series this season. The 2013 champion kicked off his season at Lee USA Speedway three weeks ago when he finished 16th in the opener. He is looking forward to going to some of the new venues this season.

” I’ve only been to Seekonk once. One previous time to race. I don’t have a whole lot of experience there. Looking forward to going to there. Of course Loudon is once in a lifetime opportunity. Just to get to race on a track that big and its a cup track.” O’Sullivan Said

O’Sullivan is excited to return to Thompson for the World Series Of Racing in October. O’Sullivan and his family have been apart of the World Series for years and he clinched the 2013 championship at one of his hometracks since 2001 before he left. To O’Sullivan going to Thompson is the most exciting part of the schedule to him.

” I like Monadnock. I like Claremont. I like Lee. I like all the tracks on the schedule. I like the way they are spread out on the schedule. Mike Parks did a nice job with spreading them out. There is a couple there that are back to back and thats kind of unavoidable. Other than that I do like the schedule.” O’Sullivan Said

O’Sullivan was a little surprised about the race coming up at Loudon with the Shorttrack Showdown this summer.

One race that was added to the schedule for the Granite State Pro Stock Series was at Oxford Plains Speedway as they will run the night before the Oxford 250 on Saturday night August 26th.

There was some ups and downs for O’Sullivan last season. He did a lot of work to the car. Up until the season opener at White Mountain last May, O’Sullivan went to work on the car and had someone go through to make sure all the stuff was lined up in a row. They picked up the car the day of White Mountain and went to the track. O’Sullivan and the team worked right until the day of the race. He showed up at White Mountain with a new motor and a new car that was never tested and was good right out of the box. He really ran really well in the heat race and led some laps in the feature. He was running second and had an issue with the fuel pickup with 11 laps to go.

He won at Monadnock and finished at Claremont and got wrecked at Lee and started to go up and down from there. He unloaded with a complete new car. The car was completely different from what he ran before. Most race tracks he went to, he had speed. He would like to improve at Lee and Claremont. He had good showings at Monadnock. O’Sullivan believes all in all when you have speed and unload a good car out of the trailer that you will have something to be competitive with no matter how well the race goes.

The series will head to Riverhead Raceway this weekend for their second race of the 2017 season. The series went there last year and was rained out. O’Sullivan believes Riverhead is not like Riverside Park Speedway.

” I think its definitely its own animal. You look at videos leading up to it and then you raced it or even if you looked at it or walked it. I thought it ran completely different then anything. I think corner shape wise. Its is own animal to me. I can’t compare it to any racetrack I’ve been on. You gotta lift early to get the car to turn. The exit of four is real sharp. I can see that part of comparison to Riverside Park but its nowhere near banked liked Riverside.” O’Sullivan Said

The level of competition in the Granite State Pro Stock Series has picked up. It would mean more to O’Sullivan if he won a second championship in 2017. It would be special to him for sure especially the way the schedule shakes out. O’Sullivan believes championships are extremely tough to win if your running at a weekly track or a touring series. To win the first one was a goal for O’Sullivan and his team. He won two at Thompson but to be able to win a touring series championship. O’Sullivan believes to win a championship you gotta have a little bit of everything. You got to have luck and you got to have speed as well as have consistency.

O’Sullivan is not one to hate when a PASS competitor comes in to race on the Granite State Pro Stock Series. D.J. Shaw ran most of the races last season in both series.

” If you get a guy like D.J. Shaw who is the PASS champion and have them before. Hes probably the best Super Late Model in the Northeast. I don’t think there is a super late model team that is stronger than him. No disrespect to Benji (Rowe) or Johnny Clark or any of those guys or Travis Benjamin. Those guys have won the championship two out of the last three years. To have come and race in your series and raise the level. I raced him at Monadnock and we had a good race.” O’Sullivan Said

O’Sullivan felt that he had good runs at the flat tracks such as Claremont and Wiscasset with Shaw. where he was very good.

” He moved the bar forward. Kind of goes to show you how much better you can be. I like the competition. We’re not PASS and I am not PASS. I don’t have that much time to prepare for any of those races as much as those guys do and thats not just an excuse. Those guys are good. They run down south and they run extremely well. So those guys are super good. Thats a high level of competition. So those guys are definitely a notch of both where we are. So when even they come to race with us even like (Dave) Farrington did at Waterford. Hes going to bring his A game. Hes going to be one of the guys to beat. Thats just the way it is. There welcome to run our series and I am ok with that.” O’Sullivan Said

O’Sullivan’s brother Tommy races on the series and Mike feels its cool to have his brother there with the team being a family. His mother brings food for the team and enjoys that part of it. Mike’s nephew will help out. His sister and his wife will also come to the track. For O’Sullivan to race against his brother is very cool. On one aspect of it, they used to spot for each other.

O’Sullivan and his family have also had success at Stafford Motor Speedway. O’Sullivan and his brother were the kids that sat in the grandstands and it was the camping trip. He also went to Riverside Park back in 1986. Tom Rosati drove one car and Ted Hebert drove the other car. They would go every Saturday before moving on to Stafford. He would just watch over time. They would run the go-karts when they could. O’Sullivan wanted to be a lot like Tom Rosati and do things the way he does it. Rosati was successful at what he did. One of the things O’Sullivan learned from his father was when he wanted to race he had to work on the cars and it was everyday after hockey practice, he would drop his hockey bag outside the garage door and go work on the car. The more he learned about them the more he got into it.

O’Sullivan wants to be consistent in 2017 and hope to run for points if everything works out.

The Granite State Pro Stock Series will to the quarter mile oval in Long Island this Saturday at Riverhead Raceway