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By Jeff Brown, for Granite State Pro Stock Series
PHOTO: Richie Blake
HUDSON, N.H. – The summer heat hanging over Hudson Speedway Sunday night might have just been an after-effect of Joey Polewarczyk’s home cooking.
The 2020 Granite State Pro Stock Series champion picked up his first series win since 2021 and his eighth overall in the evening bout at the track where he first fell in love with the sport.
Polewarczyk, who only lives a mile from the speedway, took command with a third of the race to go, holding off Casey Call for his fourth touring win on the Hudson high banks.
Call set the early pace in qualifying and brought the field to green alongside Ryan Green, returning to his own car for the first time since a grinding wreck in June. Green’s time out front was short-lived, as Wiscasset Speedway regular Jamie Wright made an early charge to the front.
But Polewarczyk followed Wright to claim third, closing in on the two leaders as they battled slower traffic by the halfway mark. Call cautiously picked his way through a tough pack of cars, with Polewarczyk breathing down his neck as they cleared the maelstrom.
A lap-60 caution presented a moment for the leaders to catch their breath, but it also erased Call’s meager lead, lining Polewarczyk up alongside him for the restart. Call defended the lead from the inside line, taking the lead for himself for a moment, but Polewarczyk regrouped and dove to the inside in the turns, drawing even with Call before easing ahead with 33 laps to go.
The battle for third place heated up in Call’s mirror as early frontrunner Wright faded. But with plenty of clear track ahead, Call could not run down “Joey Pole,” who cruised to a popular home-track win in front of a throng of family and friends.
Call held on for second, coming up short of the victory but building his advantage in the season-long point standings. In four starts, the Pembroke, N.H., youngster has two runner-up finishes and two fourth-place results.
Evan Beaulieu sorted out his practice woes by race time, making a spirited charge to third in the closing laps. It was a season-best effort for the Durham, Me. racer as he aims to get back into championship contention after a slow start.
Cory Casagrande made his own bold moves on the outside to steal fourth at the finish, with Wright ending the evening fifth in his best GSPSS outing so far.
The GSPSS teams make their first of two trips to the Pine Tree State this Saturday, July 20 for the makeup of June’s originally-scheduled 150-lapper at Speedway 95 in Bangor. More details and expected entries will be released later this week.
For more information on the Granite State Pro Stock Series, visit www.gspss.net.
