Wyatt Alexander pulls ahead to win a race at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway on Sunday, Sept. 26, 2021. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

When Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough shuttered in September 2021, many in the sport feared it was a most unfitting end for a facility that held stock car racing for 74 years.

The Maine Vintage Race Car Association hopes to give the former NASCAR-sanctioned facility a proper sendoff this summer.

“I know what it was like there on Saturday nights, and it was so much more than a racetrack,” said Dan Walker, a member of the MVRCA who is helping spearhead a July 28 event on the property. “Everybody who was ever there was part of that.”

The first Day of Short Track Racing Appreciation at Beech Ridge will showcase drivers and some cars that competed at the track. The MVRCA mobile museum will be on site as well. 

Walker and friend Andy Jones have worked with Sensor Properties, the current landowner, to host the event. Although there will be no racing, Walker said he hopes the event will provide fans an opportunity to bid farewell to a part of Maine’s racing history.

“There’s a lot of work to do between now and then, just clean up and preparing the facility,” Walker said, noting that while all light fixtures have been removed, all of the original buildings and most of the fencing and track remain. “We don’t want people to come and look at something that looks like it’s dying.”

“The goal is, let’s use it one more time. We were told the gates would never open again as a racetrack, and that’s going to be proven wrong. I don’t know if anything else is going to come of it other than this, and that’s not our intent. There’s people that want closure, and I totally get that. It’s there if somebody wants to do it.”

Friends cheer on Wyatt Alexander at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway on Sept. 26, 2021. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

The event will be free and open to the public. Donations will be accepted for the MVRCA.

Frank Moulton snapped a nearly three-year winless drought Saturday at Wiscasset Speedway.

Moulton inherited the lead 13 laps from the finish of a 40-lap Late Model Sportsman feature and never looked back. It was his first trip to Victory Lane since the 2021 season. Moulton, of Pittston, credited a new Dean Clattenburg car with making the difference.

“We had a Lefthander car before, and we got this one halfway through last year,” he said. “Dean’s been such a huge help – it’s been awesome. I feel like this will be our best year yet down here. We’ve struggled with consistency a lot, and that’s mostly me just changing stuff non-stop. I’ve got to leave it alone a little bit and just get out and do it.”

Moulton took the lead because front-row drivers Shane Clark and Jonathon Emerson were penalized on a Lap 28 restart.

“I’ve lost one before that way, so it evens it out, I guess,” Moulton said. “I think we had the best car.”

Josh St. Clair will run a number of Granite State Pro Stock Series races this season, but he will not compete on the full tour.

It marks a departure for the seven-time Wiscasset Speedway track champion across multiple divisions.

“Just not running for points this year,” St. Clair, of Liberty, said Saturday prior to Wiscasset’s opening day for its Late Model division. “If we have a slump or whatever, we don’t have to worry about going back just for points.”

St. Clair, who entered Sunday’s rained-out Pro All Stars Series race at Oxford Plains Speedway, will compete in the GSPSS opener at Star Speedway this Saturday. He also plans on entering the North American Pro Stock Nationals at Lee USA Speedway on May 18.

Josh St. Clair of Liberty poses with his daughter, Lainey, in Victory Lane on April 27 at Wiscasset Speedway. St. Clair won a 25-lap Strictly Street feature. Travis Barrett/Kennebec Journal

St. Clair said he briefly considered a full run with the GSPSS, but noted that the travel would’ve been tough.

“I saw New York (on their schedule), and was like, ‘no, thanks,’” said St. Clair, who won the Wiscasset Speedway Pro Stock title in 2023.

St. Clair is a two-time Coastal 200 winner in the Late Model division at the track his grandfather once owned.

He finished eighth in Saturday’s Late Model feature.

Douglass, who is running only a part-time schedule in 2024, has 19 career Pro Stock wins at Wiscasset – including the 2021 Boss Hogg 150. The majority of his other victories came during his Mini Stock days in the mid-2000s.

Douglass, the 2022 track champ, also plans to enter the North American Pro Stock Nationals at Lee, as well as the Pro Stock 100 at Wiscasset on June 29 and the Boss Hogg 150 on Sept. 1.