WISCASSET, Maine -- What started out as a joke on an internet message board left Mike Harnish’s wife wondering if the family phone wasn’t about to give out from exhaustion. When fellow racer Steve Reny suggested that Harnish go start a touring series for "the little guys" out there, Harnish didn’t laugh.

Instead, he explored the idea.

"We’ve gotten over 500 phone calls," Harnish said last weekend. "I really couldn’t believe how much interest there is out there in something like this."

As the region readies for its biggest Super Late Model race of the year – the New England Toyota Tundra 250 on Sunday at Wiscasset Raceway – it appears that interest in yet another regional touring series is swelling. Harnish, of Waterville, and Reny, of Boothbay, have decided that it’s time to put an end to the joking and start some serious discussions.

In the simplest terms, the yet-to-be-named tour will cater to low-budget Super Late Model teams as well as Late Model teams not on the American-Canadian Tour package, much like the ones competing weekly at Wiscasset Raceway. A strict shock rule, curtailed horsepower and 10-inch racing tires are central to the package Harnish envisions for a hybrid Super Late Model-Late Model series.

The early goal is for a field of cars in the low 20s racing a total of six to eight races annually for modest purses, with all of the races held in Maine. Harnish would like the races to be held as part of a track’s weekly show and not as standalone Sunday shows with added admission fees both in the pits and the grandstands.

Teams would be required to pay a small licensing fee to run the tour – a tangible sign, Harnish believes, of commitment to run an entire season.

"We’re after the teams that are sitting on the sidelines right now, the guys that say they can’t go ACT racing or can’t go compete with a guy like Mike Rowe in PASS," Harnish said. "Those are the guys we need to tap into.

"It’s going to be inexpensive, because we’re not going to travel all over the country. We’re not going to allow tricked-up bodies or anything like that. Frankly, I think the reputation I have and that Steve has with our peers is that we’re going to do it the right way."

After competing in the Toyota Tundra 250 himself this weekend, Harnish expects to hold an organizational meeting in the central Maine area next week to gauge interest. If he gets his way, he’d like to hold the first race for the new tour as soon as the traditional October "Long John" weekend at Unity Raceway this fall.

Unity promoter and race director George Fernald Jr. has not yet been approached about the possibility, according to Harnish.

Harnish comes to this venture as a champion of the "little guy" in local racing – he raced with the now-defunct PASS Outlaw Late Model tour and joins others in feeling slighted by that organization’s decision to close up in the middle of the current season. Both Harnish and Reny also believe that drivers at various tracks across Maine – Wiscasset Raceway included – have become vocal enough in their displeasure about weekly competition that the time is right to offer another tour.

"The opportunity is there," said Reny, who has run both PASS and ACT, as well as go-karts and everything in between. "I think it can be done without stepping on anybody’s toes, without hurting PASS or ACT. Everything comes and goes, and right now ACT seems to be doing everything right and PASS is hurting a little bit with (car counts). I think this can work, because there’s room in the middle."

While Tom Mayberry felt he had no choice but to fold the Outlaws when car counts dropped drastically early in 2008, Harnish said that he would see to it that this new tour wouldn’t suffer the same fate.

"This is a racer’s tour," Harnish said. "This is not a tour that Tom Mayberry or (PASS technical director) Scott Reed said, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’ The only ACT race I’ve seen in last three years was the (Oxford) 250, and I though it was a hell of a race. But this isn’t for those teams, and it’s not going to be the PASS tour.

"It’s not going to be for guys like Johnny Clark and Ben Rowe – those are guys who are never going to lower themselves for me or something like this. This is for the guys racing for 13^th and $300 in PASS races – those are the guys that are going to come race with me."

Posted at 11:55 p.m. by TBarrett