{"id":1737,"date":"2010-11-22T22:31:39","date_gmt":"2010-11-22T22:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maineracer.com\/wp\/?p=1737"},"modified":"2010-11-22T22:31:39","modified_gmt":"2010-11-22T22:31:39","slug":"beech-ridge-motor-speedway-closes-out-62nd-season-with-crowning-of-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/2010\/11\/beech-ridge-motor-speedway-closes-out-62nd-season-with-crowning-of-champions\/","title":{"rendered":"Beech Ridge Motor Speedway closes out 62nd season with crowning of champions."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span><strong>Portland,Maine-<\/strong> Dan McKeage, Chris Smith,<span> <\/span>David Vaughn and Matt Dow were the  guests of honor at the 62<sup>nd<\/sup> annual presentation of awards at the  Holiday Inn by the bay in Portland Maine Saturday night.<span> <\/span>The awards ceremony closed out the 2010  NASCAR Whelan All American Series at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in front of a  capacity crowd in the banquet room.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\" \/><span style=\"font-size: small;\" \/><span \/><br \/>\n<br \/><!--more--><br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">Dan McKeage was honored with the championship awards for  the Pro Series division.<span> <\/span>McKeage received his championship awards from NASCAR and Beech Ridge and  addressed the crowd in attendance and spoke some heartfelt words to his Naughty  Forty team. This was the second championship title for McKeage who scored the  Wildcat title back in 1995.<span> <\/span>McKeage earlier in the evening also picked up the prestigious Driver of  the year award.<span> <\/span>Chris Smith stepped to the podium to collect the Sport Series  championship awards.<span> <\/span>Smith capped  off a brilliant season by thanking his team and car owner George Libby This was  the third championship for Smith in his racing career as he also scored Sport  Series crowns in 2003 &#038; 2004.<span> <\/span>David Vaughn collected his 1st Beech Ridge championship on Saturday  night.<span> <\/span>In fact for Vaughn who is  not known as a points chaser, it was his first championship of any kind in  racing.<span> <\/span>Matt Dow was the Road  Runner champion for the 1st time.<span> <\/span>Dow dominated the division leading the points race from start to  finish.<span> <\/span>Several highly  coveted awards were presented lead by the Driver of the year award which went to  2010 Pro Series champion Dan McKeage.<span> <\/span>The award for Outstanding new driver was presented to first year Road  Runner competitor Ryan Phillips who finished his first season of driving in the  runner-up position in the final Road Runner standings.<span> <\/span>Two members were inducted into the Beech  Ridge Hall of Fame.<span> <\/span>Dick Berggren  was honored in August at the speedway due to his duties in Miami for the final  Sprint Cup race.<span> <\/span>Berggren took  everyone\u2019s breath away during his days of driving a sprint car around on the  Beech Ridge dirt and moved on to become a very well respected journalist.<span> <\/span>Rick Zemla was inducted on  Saturday night as the next member of the Hall of fame.<span> <\/span>Zemla blistered Beech Ridge for many  years taking wins and championships before moving on to compete in the old  NASCAR North Tour.<span> <\/span>The Lifetime  Achievement award was presented postuminously to Bub Bilodeau and was accepted  by Bub\u2019s widow Terry and children Lori and April was well as Bub\u2019s brother Rick  Bilodeau.<span> <\/span>Rookie of the  year awards went to Chris Thorne (Pro Series), Kevin Oliver (Sport Series),  Laura McKeage (Wildcat) and Ryan Phillips (Road Runner).<span> <\/span>Performance Advancement awards were  presented to Steve Carrier (Pro Series), Corey Bubar (Sport Series), Alby Ovitt  (Wildcat) and Dave Cameron (Road Runner).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><span> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 0in 0in 0pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\">The 2011 NASCAR Whelan All American Series at Beech Ridge  Motor Speedway will kick off in May.<span> <\/span>Expect to see return visits from the Pro All Star Series and the American  Canadian Tour as well as the Modified Racing Series.<span> <\/span>Thursday Thunder and the Day of  Destruction events should make for another banner  season.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Portland,Maine- Dan McKeage, Chris Smith, David Vaughn and Matt Dow were the guests of honor at the 62nd annual presentation of awards at the Holiday Inn by the bay in Portland Maine Saturday night. The awards ceremony closed out the 2010 NASCAR Whelan All American Series at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in front of a [&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":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beech-ridge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737","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=1737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maineracing.com\/legacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}