MECHANIC FALLS -- Bob Guptill knows the questions before they are asked of him. He’s spent the better part of the last year building his case.

How can a touring series based on the lowest of the entry level divisions get off the ground? How can it compete for attention? And, by the way, which teams on a Mini Stock budget are going to want to travel all over New England to race?

Guptill believes his fledgling North East Mini Stock Tour will answer all of those questions.

“Anybody can race these cars and be competitive,” said Guptill, 24, who spent the last seven seasons racing the Mini Stock division at Oxford Plains Speedway. “You don’t have to spend a lot of money to come race with us. Cost is one of the best things we have going for us in this economy.”

More than 50 teams have already reserved numbers with Guptill, and 12 of those teams have paid the registration fee. The NEMST has seven points races -- at seven different tracks -- on its 2009 schedule. The slate kicks off at Speedway 95 on May 17 and runs through a Sept. 13 race at Spud Speedway in Caribou.

Guptill said he guarantees he will pay each race winner a purse of $400, and last-place finishers will win enough, he hopes, to pay their way into the races at the very least.

Success will be measured, according to Guptill, by starting fields in the 15-18 car range at each event in the first season. He hopes to expand the schedule to as many as a dozen races in coming years with a car count that reaches the mid-20s.

The cars are mostly stock, with race tires and springs, and the entire package for a non-tour team will cost around $500 to become tour-legal, Guptill said. He believes the cars themselves could provide an affordable option for young teams that aspire to bigger regional series like ACT or PASS, or a place for veteran teams confined to a small budget to call home.

“I was reading Speedway Illustrated, and it had a big article about this kind of thing,“ Guptill said. “One of biggest things it talked about is people racing over their budget. They said that if you can wreck and park the car in the infield on fire without having to mortgage the house or refinance to be able to fix it, you’re in the right division.”

Attracting attention, however, remains Guptill’s greatest challenge.

He is not interested in becoming a support division for PASS or ACT, knowing that it would garner zero media attention on race day. Tracks have been reluctant to either pay for a tour that’s yet to stage a single race, or to host it at all.

Year one, Guptill says, is about showing tracks that the tour could infuse as much as “$1,600” into their weekly show profits -- by bringing 20 cars with four people per team at a minimum to watch.

It’s ambitious, but Guptill believes there’s a call for this kind of racing as competitors become disenchanted with the widening gap from one Mini Stock division to the next across the northeast -- or because they simply want to visit tracks other their own from time to time during a grueling 20-race weekly schedule.

A number of tours have tried and failed using the same philosophies, but not for Mini Stocks. Typically, Mini Stocks have been rendered as little more than filler on weekly cards, competing in races just 15 to 20 laps in length early in the program.

All North East Mini Stock Tour features will be 50 laps.

“This series is going to be good for veterans that have raced (Mini Stocks) forever, or for the young guys just getting started,” Guptill said. “The points purse is designed to be enough to keep people wanting to run all year, and the rules are structured so that you can be competitive here and at your own track.

“People just need to see that they can be competitive with us.”

Posted at 9:45 a.m. by TBarrett