Derek Griffith had only made three Granite State Pro Stock Series appearances since his last win in 2020. But he sure made his fourth one count.
The 2015 GSPSS champion outpaced the season’s biggest field to win Friday night’s Keen Parts 150, capping off Lee USA Speedway’s Cup Weekend Kickoff on the eve of NASCAR’s biggest touring weekend in New England.
And this time, no post-race photo review was necessary.
Griffith’s dominant drive earned him his eighth career GSPSS win, a $10,000 check, and a first victory for the newest car in his stable.
“The thing’s just a rocketship,” he said after the race. “It was so good last week. We just had an issue with fuel pressure. This whole situation last week would have been totally different if we didn’t have the fuel pressure issue.
“The thing’s a rocket, man. Brand new car, and right out of the box, it’s been fast.”
Griffith traces the turn-three curb at Lee USA Speedway en route to his eighth career GSPSS win. (STS/Jeff Brown photo)
The “situation last week,” of course, was a photo finish in last Friday’s Pro All Stars Series Chummy Brown Memorial 144. Griffith was flagged the winner and celebrated with his crew, but officials reversed the call over an hour later, after reviewing photos and transponder placement on the cars of Griffith and ultimate winner Joey Doiron.
The Hudson, N.H. phenom took the decision in stride, correcting a mechanical issue and hauling the same race car to “New Hampshire’s Center of Speed,” where the GSPSS would sanction Lee’s customary preamble to the Granite State’s annual NASCAR Cup Series appearance.
Griffith and Doiron were at the top of the speed charts at Lee, too, with two-time Lee GSPSS winner Corey Bubar starting on the front row courtesy of a top-three invert. Doiron jumped out to the early lead, but Bubar scooted past on lap 14, with Griffith following a lap later.
Doiron had more speed than Bubar at times, but Bubar kept the door closed as he tried to chase down Griffith. (STS/Jeff Brown photo)
Bubar held his own out front, but a lap-36 yellow closed the gap between the two No. 12 cars. When Bubar faltered on the restart, Griffith poked out front to take the lead, only for the yellow to fly a lap later. Bubar tried to outfox Griffith on the restart, but officials called the start back, with Griffith taking the point on the second attempt.
The leaders quickly caught the tail of the field under green, giving Bubar an opportunity to get around Griffith in traffic. Point leader Cole Robie was among the slower cars on the long green-flag run. Robie and Alex Quarterley slowed up Griffith on lap 67, allowing Bubar to thread the needle and take the lead, also trapping the point leader a lap down.
Corey Bubar gets under Griffith as Alex Quarterley gets bunched up with the leaders off turn four. (STS/Jeff Brown photo)
But Robie looped his ailing car on the backstretch the next time around, bringing out a caution flag. Scoring reverted to the last completed lap, not only handing the race lead back to Griffith, but conveniently putting Robie back on the lead lap. Robie and fellow title contenders Casey Call and Evan Beaulieu pulled to the pits for adjustments under the yellow flag, while most of the leaders stayed on track.
Griffith distanced himself from Bubar on the restart, while Eddie MacDonald displaced Doiron for third, only for Doiron to power back to the podium position. Robie began working his way through traffic, while Call and Beaulieu continued to struggle. A lap-91 yellow was the title challengers’ saving grace, as they took advantage of a chance to make further adjustments.
Evan Beaulieu runs ahead of Tyler Reddick early in the race. Beaulieu’s car faded in the second half of the race, while Reddick—in an Archie St. Hilaire-owned car—went on to finish 12th. (STS/Jeff Brown photo)
Out front, Griffith needed no further tuning, pulling away from Bubar and Doiron on the race’s final green-flag stretch. In the final 25 laps, he lapped all but the top ten, clearing a thrilling battle for 11th as the white flag unfurled ahead.
Despite the lapped traffic wildcard, Griffith crossed under the checkered flags 2.456 seconds ahead of his nearest rival, taking his second Keen Parts 150 win.
“The poor flag guy was working pretty hard to get those lapped cars out of the way,” Griffith said. “But they stayed in the way, so that was nice.”
He laughed. “We expected it,” he clarified. “It’s Lee, and we were really good, and I’m like, ‘those guys in the back, if we get to them, it’s gonna be a little tough.’ But I knew it would have been a good buffer to keep between, because as hard as it is for me to pass them, it’s probably gonna be just as hard for the guys behind me to pass them. It was a little rough.”
Griffith, wife Emily, and son Dax share the winner’s circle with his Louie Mechalides-led team. (STS/Jeff Brown photo)
Indeed, Bubar knew that lapped traffic would be his only hope of dethroning Griffith.
“I think the only thing that would have helped me is lapped traffic,” the second-place finisher said. “And we had somehow caught lapped traffic, and it held him up, and I caught him through that. He had a really good car.”
Restarts were Bubar’s bane all night.
“We kind of changed some rear end stuff, and I’ve been spinning tires a lot with it,” he said. “And I just kind of worried about that a little bit. And I didn’t want to take the car and really turn it into something bad. And then getting over into turn one, my car just got too tight.”
Doiron, who won the GSPSS’ last Lee outing in July, was third, his worst finish in four series starts this year. The two-time GSPSS champion lamented that his car was too tight on the final run to rally for the win.
Bubar, Griffith and Doiron share a friendly podium photo. (STS/Jeff Brown photo)
MacDonald, whose family owned and operated Lee for several years, was fourth, while defending Keen Parts 150 winner Brandon Barker was fifth for car owner Archie St. Hilaire.
Robie rebounded from his lap-68 spin in the final stretch run, driving all the way to sixth despite taking nose damage in the last few laps. Dave Farrington, Jr. was seventh, with teenager Sylas Ripley ending the evening in eighth. Travis Stearns and Garrett Hall rounded out the top ten.
Robie’s path to a rookie championship firmed up ever slightly, with Beaulieu limping to a 19th-place finish and Call parking his car early after further struggles for the reigning champion.
Bad luck quickly turned into good fortune for points leader Robie, who rebounded with a sixth-place finish while his points challengers struggled. (STS/Jeff Brown photo)
Keeping with Lee tradition for the Keen Parts 150, NASCAR Cup Series playoff contender Tyler Reddick and spotter Derek Kneeland were entered to take a run at the series regulars. Reddick, who finished second in the 2022 Keen Parts 150, diced for position with Connor McDougal over the final twenty laps, but could climb no higher than 12th. Kneeland, entered in one of his own cars, finished 15th.
But while the two national names prepared to head back to work Saturday, Griffith and his crew were celebrating a win and a trophy that they got to keep.
Veteran NASCAR spotter and Maine native Derek Kneeland finished 15th in his only GSPSS appearance of the year. (STS/Jeff Brown photo)
Griffith’s eighth career GSPSS win ties him with Doiron and Jeremy Davis for the third-most wins in series history. Three of those wins have come at Lee, with Griffith winning back-to-back Oktoberfest features in 2019 and 2020. Griffith also won Lee’s inaugural Freedom 300 in 2020, and won the second running of the Keen Parts 150 in 2023, when the race was sanctioned as a Lee Pro Stock feature.
But the series in which he won the 2015 championship is only a small part of his plans as he continues to eye national-scale events like December’s Snowball Derby and February’s World Series at New Smyrna Speedway.
His newest car, with a win in only its fourth start, gives him optimism for those big road shows.
Griffith is only an occasional GSPSS competitor, but has racked up four wins in a handful of starts since 2016. (STS/Jeff Brown photo)
“I’d like to get this car prepared for the Derby,” Griffith said. “I’d like to race this car at the Derby. I think we’ll have the 400 deal set up at the end of October with PASS. I don’t know for sure, but it just depends on a couple things I’ve got going on.”
Griffith has two other chassis in his stable: the PASS-configured car he bought from Garrett Hall in 2022 to replace one destroyed at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and a chassis he reserves for the big national-level road trips.
“The red chassis car came from Canada. It used to be owned by Kyle Reid,” he said. “That’s the car we’ve run at Speedweeks. We’ve only run it at Speedweeks so far. It was a damn good car. I don’t know, I think this new generation of Fury chassis is so much better. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
All things considered, it’s a good problem to have.
“Those other cars were so damn good,” he said. “They won so many races. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”
Unofficial Results
Granite State Pro Stock Series | Keen Parts 150
Lee USA Speedway, Lee, N.H.
1. (12G) Derek Griffith
2. (12X) Corey Bubar
3. (73D) Joey Doiron
4. (17MA) Eddie MacDonald
5. (32) Brandon Barker
6. (29) Cole Robie
7. (23) Dave Farrington, Jr.
8. (09R) Sylas Ripley
9. (153) Travis Stearns
10. (94) Garrett Hall
11. (8NH) Connor McDougal
12. (45) Tyler Reddick
13. (44) Rusty Poland
14. (7CT) Cory Casagrande
15. (90K) Derek Kneeland
16. (32Q) Alex Quarterley
17. (48) Mike Mitchell
18. (09) Frankie Eldredge
19. (56) Evan Beaulieu
20. (97) Joey Polewarczyk
21. (81) Dan Winter
22. (90NH) Casey Call
23. (77) Cam Curtis
24. (27NH) Wayne Helliwell, Jr.
25. (5MA) Tom Carey III
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