RPW Exclusive: An Eventful World Short Track Championship For Pro Stock Racers Rich Crane, Nick Stone & Roch Aubin

Column By: TREVOR GAVIN / RPW – CONCORD, NC – The DIRTcar Pro Stocks made their debut this weekend at the DRIVEN World Short Track Championship. The full fender class that is popular throughout the Northeast United States and in Canada put on a great show for the fans in attendance.

Originally, 16 cars were scheduled to race. However, due to some weather throughout the east coast, the car count grew to 18 on Saturday.

HEARTBREAK AWARD
Canaan, CT’s Rich Crane was not originally planning on making the drive down to North Carolina to race at the 4/10 mile clay oval. Crane, who races weekly at Lebanon Valley with the father/son duo of Jay and Jason Casey, got a call from the Casey’s letting him know that DIRTcar would run the entire show on Saturday after the Friday rain out.

With only 16 cars checked in and everyone making the feature, Crane decided to load up and make the drive.

The veteran campaigner left Thursday night around 10:30 pm from Connecticut and arrived to rainy North Carolina by noon on Friday. Saturday morning, Crane checked in to the pits at 8:00am expecting to run the entire program. All teams found out at 9:00am that DIRTcar had changed from the one-day plan to a two-day, thus putting Crane in quite a predicament.

Crane’s wife is a school teacher who had to work on Monday and Rich owns Crane’s Outdoor Power Equipment, a business were customers lined up to pick up equipment Monday morning as well. He had tried to withdraw from the event since the schedule change was after he had checked in but could not. After a few attempts to coordinate flights and rental cars, he had no other choice then to drive home Sunday and miss the feature.

Crane time trialed an impressive ninth since it was his first time on the track, turning a lap of 20.860. He finished seventh in his heat and that would be it for Crane and his #711 team as they did not start the feature on Sunday.

That is what you have to love about the racing spirit of a driver like Rich Crane. You cannot begin to imagine the time and money spent by he and his family to head to Charlotte, only to make eight laps around the track. Crane had high hopes for the event but with the inevitability of the features being on Sunday and not being able to be a part of it, you still couldn’t wipe the smile form his face when he was in the pit area.

GOOD CALL AWARD
Nick Stone took home the victory in the 30-lap Pro Stock Championship feature from his seventh starting position. Stone was not one of the original 16 cars checked in to the event on Thursday but decided to come down to the event after his original plans of racing at Utica-Rome on Saturday were cancelled. Utica-Rome pulled the plug on Thursday so it allowed Stone and car owner, Jason Meltz, to make the journey from New York with the number 51 car.

Stone timed sixth and finished his heat race in fourth. Starting from the fourth row, the Rotterdam, NY driver slowly worked his way through the field and took the lead with four laps to go.

The team pocketed $3,000 for taking home the win.

CANADA TO CHARLOTTE
Roch Aubin from Cornwall, ONT said the first 18 hours of his drive to Charlotte went very smooth. However, once arriving in the Queen City, things went off the rails.

As they got off the highway, the toterhome that the team had borrowed just about went up in flames. A wheel seal on a front tire failed and spilled fluid on to the hot brake rotor. Luckily the team was able to extinguish the flames before any major damage was done.

The team picked up a rental car so they could leave the trailer at the track each day. On their way back to the track, another car ran a stop sign, coming out in front of their rental car and they t-boned it. Luckily, everyone was okay.

They say bad things come in threes, so the Canadian natives should have been expecting at least one more hiccup to come….and it did.

Once they opened the hauler the team noticed that the back-up car in the stacker trailer had come off the rack. No damage was done, just another issue to deal with after the 900 mile drive.

The back-up car came in handy, however, because fellow Cornwall Motor Speedway Pro Stock driver Michael Blais lost a motor during Thursday hot laps. The Aubin team loaned Blais their backup and he drove the #14 to a 14th place finish in the feature.

After all the miles and difficulties, Aubin timed 13th, finished fifth in heat #1 and went on to finish fourth in the feature after starting sixth. Aubin and his team stuck around to run the All-Star feature and finished in the runner-up position behind the #29 of Rick Duzlak.

The Ontario native, who is a plow truck driver by day, said that because they were going home on Monday he was going to miss the first snow fall of the year.

“They are expecting 15 to 27 cm (6 to 10 inches) so I am missing out on that,” Aubin said before heat races on Saturday.

Aubin was happy to be back at Charlotte representing the Pro Stock class.

“I remember being down here 15 years ago as a crew member for Joey Ladouceur when he was running Pro Stock,” he said.

Ladouceur had blown a motor leading up to the feature and the team was rushing to get another motor in and ready. A stranger who was in the pit area came up to the team and offered to lend a hand.

“He was nice enough to climb under the car with me and help out,” Aubin recalled. “When we finished up, I went to thank him for his help and then I realized it was Carl Edwards.”

Edwards was just starting his full-time NASCAR career back in 2003.

“He just joined in because he saw other racers who needed help,” he said of Edwards. “He wasn’t afraid to jump in and get his hands dirty.”