* SO, WHO REALLY is the "King of Wiscasset?"

The fact is, despite announcements and releases to the contrary, no one is right now. It was believed that when Maurice Young of Windsor won his sixth championship at Wiscasset Raceway last September, he was the winningest driver in the history of the track in terms of championships.

But the track only counted Scott Chubbuck’s five titles in its top division, and not one he won in a Super Street class. That gives him six.

What’s too bad is that Young spent several seasons chasing that mark, using it as motivation week-in and week-out. Even a few years ago, when I first met him, Young talked about how he was shooting for Chubbuck’s all-time championship mark.

But it turns out that in winning the championship last year, he was unknowingly shooting too low. For such a hard-working, nose to the grindstone racer, it’s embarrassing.

I just think that it throwing around a name like "King" we should have been more careful to make certain we were right on that one.

Best-ever, legendary, true champion – these are terms that are thrown around endlessly, and usually without merit. But decades from now – 20, 30, maybe even 40 years if short-track racing can survive that long – people are going to remember Maurice Young. There going to remember the car, the No. 03, the stretch of dominance.

They ought to be able to remember his as The King, too, if that’s the title that he earns.

But only if he earns it, and not if it’s given to him as a marketing ploy or a public relations cookie.

* NO ONE WAS more surprised to get a check for $450 in the mail than Super Late Model driver Mike Harnish.

Andy Boright, perhaps better known to most by his internet handle "Andy B" on numerous on-line message boards and forums, is a well-known Late Model crusader and Super Late Model cynic. But when Harnish got that aforementioned check to pay for three tires in this weekend’s Toyota Tundra 250, it came from Andy B himself.

"I couldn’t believe it, I really couldn’t," Harnish said. "But it came with a note that said, ‘Win one for the little guy, will you?’ Here he is sending that to a (Super Late Model) guy, when everyone thinks he hates them."

The little guy, I guess in the end, is exactly who Andy B goes to battle for each and every day on the World Wide Web.

* I HAD TO chuckle when Martin Truex Jr. said he was glad "to put an end to all the rumors" and to get rid "of all the speculation" by signing a contract to stay at DEI.

Through next season.

What speculation, exactly, is Truex putting an end to? At the very least, the rumor mill will start churning regarding Truex’s future at DEI again next spring, in the exact same fashion it did this year.

But, more certainly, only signing a one-year extension at DEI raises more questions than it answers.

Is Truex’s value on the free-agent market not what he had it pegged at? Were there not as many lucrative offers as he’d hoped for? If there were, then why remain at DEI – and why only for one year? If he believes so much in the direction DEI is taking, and it’s what he said when the team made the announcement at Watkins Glen last Friday, then where’s his long-term commitment?

Like I said, it’s laughable for Truex to believe that "all the speculation" will just quietly disappear now.

* LET ME GET this straight, OK?

We’re getting rid of softball as an Olympic sport, but we’re keeping badminton?

Huh?

* TAKE NOTHING AWAY from Daren Ripley the person, but take everything away from Ripley’s win in the Late Model ranks at Wiscasset last weekend.

The track professes a hard stance against jumping restarts, but Ripley was allowed to jump not one – with the obligatory warning – and then a second one with no further penalty. He would have jumped a third and final one, too, had it not been midnight and Chris Thorne decided to just start early, too, on the outside of the front row.

And as if that weren’t enough, when the jumping-the-restart tactic didn’t give Ripley the advantage he needed, he drove one of the track’s true good guys – Thorne – almost off the turn one pit access road in trying to keep the lead and making his car several grooves wide.

That kind of stuff ought to be unacceptable, anywhere and anytime.

* FOR YEARS THE knock against the American-Canadian Tour was that it wasn’t producing any NASCAR talent at the regional or national levels – Brian Hoar notwithstanding – so it wasn’t a viable series for young drivers to consider.

But, consider this: In the last month, both ACT points leader and 2-time ACT winner this season Joey Polewarczyk Jr. have received opportunities with Camping World East Series teams. That says something for what ACT provides.

"I just think it’s because the cars are so even, it really shows you a lot about the drivers," said Polewarczyk, who finished 3^rd in the TD Banknorth 250 at Oxford Plains Speedway, two spots behind Sprint Cup Series driver Kevin Harvick.

Polewarczyk will enter the CWES Heluva Good! Fall 125 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway next month in a car owned by Maine native Dave Davis.

"I hope (Harvick) sees me out there and tells people, that’s the kid I was racing with in the Oxford 250," Polewarczyk said, "and I hope someone listens and gives me a shot somewhere."

* HOW WAS MY vacation? How was it?

It rained. A lot.

Is anyone really all that surprised?

* SPEAKING OF RAIN, let’s put into perspective just how miserable a summer it’s been at area race tracks.

Wiscasset has rained out six times already this season.

Bill Ryan said it’s been the worst season at Oxford, in terms of rain and weather-related attendance, in 30 years there.

Unity Raceway has rained out twice already, and they didn’t start running until June.

Good news for Becky White, who still believes I hold other-worldly powers over the weather at Wiscasset: long-range forecasts call for our first summer-like day in weeks on Sunday.

* I WISH I could ever be in the kind of slump where I win four out of seven races.

I know that everyone loves the annual "Hendrick Motorsports Rebounds" story, about as much as they love the "First the Yankees are dead, and then here they come storming back" one – but let’s be honest here, folks. Jimmie Johnson had a nice little run with a win at the Brickyard, but that win couples with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s win at Michigan in June to provide the only two wins this season for Hendrick Motorsports.

Period.

That to me doesn’t say they’re back. And the performances of Carl Edwards at Pocono and Kyle Busch at Watkins Glen only cemented that belief.

Posted at 1:35 a.m. by TBarrett