{"id":129,"date":"2007-11-07T12:43:46","date_gmt":"2007-11-07T12:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maineracer.com\/wp\/?p=129"},"modified":"2007-11-07T12:43:46","modified_gmt":"2007-11-07T12:43:46","slug":"northern-teams-look-defend-mason-dixon-meltdown-bragging-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/2007\/11\/northern-teams-look-defend-mason-dixon-meltdown-bragging-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Teams Look Defend Mason-Dixon Meltdown Bragging Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">A Mainer Won The Race in &lsquo;06, Now Several PASS North Racers Hope to Do The Same In &lsquo;07<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>CONCORD, NC (November 7, 2007) &#8211; The Mason-Dixon Meltdown is a Super Late Model version of a racing civil war.&nbsp; Although it is a Pro All Stars Series (PASS) South Super Late Model race, the event attracted scores of PASS North regulars when it was held at South Boston Speedway (VA) in 2006..<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Maine&rsquo;s Cassius Clark led a charge to victory by his homestate&rsquo;s contingent of Johnny Clark, Ben Rowe, Mike Rowe and others last season.&nbsp; But it wasn&rsquo;t before a number of strong Southern racers, including Travis Kittleson and Jason Hogan, put up a good fight.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>Now, for round two of Meltdown, which has moved to Concord Motorsport Park in Concord, North Carolina, the Northerners are hoping to earn bragging rights once again.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&ldquo;It was pretty much a sweep with the Northern guys last year at the first Meltdown,&rdquo; said 2007 PASS North Champion Ben Rowe, who finished sixth in last year&rsquo;s event.&nbsp; &ldquo;But it will be tough.&nbsp; There are a lot of Southern guys who are pretty good.&rdquo;<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&ldquo;That was a fun race,&rdquo; said two-time PASS North champion Johnny Clark.&nbsp; &ldquo;It brings out the top dogs from the North and the South.&nbsp; I think that that it&rsquo;s pretty cool that we have this Mason-Dixon race going.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s kind of like in the past when we had some big PASS races with the Canadians and we had an American-Canadian rivalry.&nbsp; Now we have a North-South rivalry and that&rsquo;s cool.&rdquo;&nbsp; <br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>Going to a new venue is something that the Northern teams are looking forward to.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&ldquo;I think that it is neat to go to another track this year,&rdquo; said 2006 Meltdown winner Cassius Clark.&nbsp; &ldquo;They can mix it up every year and keep going to new tracks.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m used to that.&nbsp; When I raced Legends cars and now with this [Super Late Model], I&rsquo;ve never had a home track.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve watched a couple of races at Concord and tested a Legends car at the little track there at Concord, but never raced there.&nbsp; Johnny [Clark] has gone down a couple of times and it&rsquo;s a neat track.&nbsp; We never went to South Boston before last year and we made out alright there, so hopefully we can do the same thing at Concord.&rdquo;<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>If any Yankee has an advantage at Concord, it could be Johnny Clark, who raced at the track several times when the track hosted the now-defunct World Asphalt Championships for the old Big 10 Super Late Model Series.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&ldquo;That is a fun place,&rdquo; added Johnny Clark.&nbsp; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s an awfully fast track.&nbsp; I love the tracks where you can really get up on the wheel and go fast.&nbsp; As long as you come out of a race there without scraping the wall, you&rsquo;ve done all right.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had some good luck there.&nbsp; We lost a motor there the first time that we went and we were running fifth.&nbsp; The last time that we went there, we finished second to Freddie [Query].&nbsp; Whenever you do that there, you are doing pretty good at Concord.&rdquo;<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>Even those who haven&rsquo;t been to the track yet are looking forward to it.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t really know anything about the track, but I have heard a lot about it,&rdquo; said 2006 PASS North Rookie of the Year Alan Tardiff.&nbsp; &ldquo;We&rsquo;re really excited to go to a track of that caliber.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s plenty of history there and there will be a lot of cars there.&nbsp; Hopefully, we&rsquo;ll have a good showing.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ll concentrate on getting it the show first and then we&rsquo;ll race the race.&rdquo;<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>And escaping the chilly confines of New England in the fall to head to the heart of stock car racing is always a good thing too.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>&ldquo;I think that the location this year is [even] better,&rdquo; said Tardiff.&nbsp; &ldquo;Recognition is hard to come by and the area that we&rsquo;ll be racing in is the heart of racing.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s going to be fun.&nbsp; We&rsquo;re going down a week early to visit the shops and visit some friends.&nbsp; We&rsquo;ll make a little vacation out of it, so we&rsquo;re excited about that too.&rdquo;<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>Other Northern drivers who have also sent in entries for the 2007 Mason-Dixon Meltdown include Joey Porciello, Trevor Sanborn, Richie Dearborn, Derek Ramstrom, Ryan Moore and DJ Shaw.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>The second annual Mason-Dixon Meltdown will take place at Concord Motorsport Park (NC) on November 16th-17th.<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>For more information on the PASS North and South Series, please contact 51 Sports at (704) 788-2134 and for technical and rules information on all of the PASS tours, please contact Scott Reed at (207) 625-3230.&nbsp; <br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>Also, be sure to visit the official PASS South website at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.racewithpass.com\/\">www.racewithpass.com<\/a> and the official website of PASS North, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.proallstarsseries.com\/\">www.proallstarsseries.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Mainer Won The Race in &lsquo;06, Now Several PASS North Racers Hope to Do The Same In &lsquo;07&nbsp;CONCORD, NC (November 7, 2007) &#8211; The Mason-Dixon Meltdown is a Super Late Model version of a racing civil war.&nbsp; Although it is a Pro All Stars Series (PASS) South Super Late Model race, the event attracted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}