Doiron Hopes Speed Remains
Joey Doiron of Berwick, ME is entering his first race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway since the inaugural ACT Invitational. He led the first 20 laps in 2009, but blistered tires caused a poor finish.
“It’s cool to come back and hopefully take off from where we left off the last time here,” Doiron said. “… It’s not going to hurt ya by any stretch, but the teams I’m going to be racing for the win also have a bunch of experience, so it is what it is.”
Doiron called the inaugural AIM 60 “a big deal” for the Pro All Stars Series (PASS), and drivers who get to race at New England’s largest oval.
“The way I look at it it’s just another racetrack two straightaways, four corners, you just kind of have to go with the you can’t over psych yourself. You just gotta go in there with the same mentality you would every other week. There’s not one more race that’s any more important than the other.”
Doiron expects the race to be fun against a 33 car field. The race is for PASS National points, but North entries can drop their worst finish this season.
“We’ll see how the race shakes out. There’s a lot of good cars here. There’s not many slouches, so it should hopefully be a good show. Just get what we can get today and hopefully beat all the weekly guys.”
Doiron is third in points with one win, four top fives, six top tens in after eight races. He points to the two finishes outside the top 10 (15th at Star and 20th at Autodrome Chaudiere) that expanded the gap to 62 points behind leader Mike Rowe.
“It’s been an alright year this year so far. … We had a bad race there a couple of weeks ago in Quebec and really put a 40 point swing on the bad side of us. Otherwise we’d be right up there with Mike, so just gotta try to minimize the bad races from here on out. Mike hasn’t had a bad race yet, so we just have to capitalize when he does and if we do that then we should be right back in the hunt of it.”
Doiron is supported by his parents, JBJ Machine, AR Bodies and Dale Shaw Race Cars.
ACT Late Model Tour experience helped Doiron in May at Thunder Road International Speedbowl in Vermont. He captured the inaugural Mekkelsen RV Memorial Day Classic.
“It’s probably one of the most historic tracks in New England right up there with Stafford, but it was definitely a big deal to me. I … really liked it and never thought I’d get the chance to go back so it’s kind of like Loudon. But it’s still a cool deal and just keep trying to dig here and we got some good tracks coming up for us.”
Sources: Nicholas Teto/YankeeRacer.com