OXFORD

In his days as a basketball point guard at Belfast Area High School, Travis Benjamin showed the requisite knack for thinking two or three moves ahead of the competition and finding daylight.

As he ran side-by-side with Joey Doiron late in the TD Bank 250 Sunday night, with lapped traffic jockeying in that same formation dead ahead, Benjamin unleashed auto racing’s equivalent of a bounce pass.

Benjamin threaded the needle through the commotion, risking all he’d earned to that point for a few inches of daylight on the 3/8-mile Oxford Plains Speedway oval.

A gamble, yes, but it gave the Pro All Stars Series champion a cushion that he needed and protected for the final 42 laps of the 40th annual short track showcase. The 34-year-old from Morrill won $33,400 and put his name on one of the most coveted trophies at the grass roots level of the sport.

“I’m in a dream world,” Morrill said. “Look at that (trophy). My name’s going to go right under Kyle Busch.”

Kevin Harvick, too. And the Rowes, Mike and Ben. And Ralph Nason, a old rival of Benjamin’s father, Ron.

Benjamin is the first Maine driver to win the 250 since Jeremie Whorff of West Bath in 2006, the most recent race contested with super late model cars.

Thinking of Whorff, he finished 36th in this year’s race.

Doiron, 21, of Berwick, finished second, Jay Fogleman of Durham, N.C., was third. Austin Theriault of Fort Kent edged Farmington’s Cassius Clark by inches for fourth at the stripe.