It was by sheer luck that one of the area's most talented stock car drivers ever got behind the wheel of a race car in the first place.

Not that Cassius Clark didn't come from racing bloodlines, mind you. He grew up in the grandstands at Oxford Plains Speedway, watching his father, Billy, compete there on a weekly basis before moving on to tour the Northeast in the NASCAR Busch North Series' infancy.

But in the early 1990s, Billy Clark couldn't afford his own ride, and he wasn't offered anything substantial with established teams. He injured his shoulder in a bad trucking accident and walked away from the sport.

Cassius moved on, too, tackling the winter world of ski racing while enjoying life in Boothbay in the summer as a teenager.

"We never went to the race track again," Cassius said this week, as he was readying his car for the PASS North Series season opener today at Beech Ridge Motor Speedway. "I think we went to one Oxford 250 in that time to watch, but it was five or six years where we didn't go at all.

"And I never really thought about racing myself, to be honest."

But sidling up next to them at the Boothbay marina was Ed Chapman. Ed's son, Matthew, had become fast friends with Cassius. Ed also had a Legends car he raced with very little success, until he turned to Billy for advice.

"I think he went out and won that race after I got to tinkering with it," Billy said with a chuckle.

And Billy Clark was suddenly back in the racing game, heading back to the track every week to help Chapman's efforts. But the fun of being back in the pits each and every week quickly wore on Cassius -- who was relegated to the sidelines while watching his friends compete.

"I didn't want to sound like a spoiled brat or anything, but I told him that if we were going to keep going to the track, then I wanted one of those cars to race, too," Cassius said.

So, Billy bought a Legends car for Cassius, turned the wrenches on it himself and put Cassius on the road to a career in stock car racing. Less than a decade later, Cassius has competed against some of the nation's biggest NASCAR stars and posted 10 career PASS North wins in the last three seasons -- all while driving a car owned by Ed Chapman.

Not bad for someone who never even considered racing.

Title Hunt

Cassius Clark has won races and championships in Legends cars, and he has been a dominant presence in the PASS North Series for a few years now. But if there's one glaring omission on the 26-year-old Farmington product's resume, it's a PASS North championship.

This year, he will again try to win the title and will also chase the sanctioning body's four-race national championship series for the Super Late Model division.

Mechanical failures littered the 2006 season, Clark's best shot at the crown, when he won a series-high five races in only 12 starts. That effort came on the heels of a breakout 2005 season, when he won three races, posted 10 top-three finishes and ended up a career-best third in the final series point standings.

"If you're going to race in all the races, you're obviously going to want it," Clark said of the overall title. "But a championship pretty much comes to you, too.

"My outlook is that you still go to the race track every week trying to win, and you get the best possible finish you can. If you win races, you get the most points every week. It's a simple formula -- it's not rocket science by any means."

Clark's maturation process -- on and off the track -- has meant the most to his development. In his first two seasons with PASS, in 2002 and 2003, he ran a total of 30 races without a single top-three finish. By contrast, he's finished on the podium in 22 of his 41 races during the last three years.

Two-time series champion and close friend Johnny Clark (no relation) thinks Cassius is as good as any racer out there.

"He's a smart driver, because he knows where that line is where he can bump you without wrecking you," Johnny said. "When Cassius first started, he was quite aggressive -- he still is. He's a very aggressive driver, but he's found that (line) over the last few years.

"He was never one to come out and ride around and learn things. He knew that if he came out, he was going to do whatever he could to try and win. Sometimes that meant tearing up his own car."

Cassius said he believes it's his job to understand patient aggressiveness.

"I don't want to say I'll do whatever it takes to win, but I don't like to lose," he said. "If they're going to give me half a groove, it's my job to find a way to get by, whether we're racing for first or 10th place."

A Tradition

Billy Clark never doubted his son's talent behind the wheel of a race car. He had seen the competitive fire as it burned down the sides of mountains on a pair of skis.

"He has unbelievable talent," Billy said of Cassius, "but after his first couple of times in a car, I did start to think, 'Oh, I don't know.' But we were just learning together, too."

Cassius, who said he was his father's biggest fan as a kid, believes he's benefited from working so closely with his dad, who has served as his crew chief on anything he's ever raced.

"We're pretty close in personality," Cassius said. "He wants to win as bad as I want to win. He cheers for me as much as I used to cheer for him. Sometimes things get hot, but that's the business side of racing.

"When we leave the track, we're still family."

A family with a racing tradition that almost wasn't carried on, had Ed Chapman not called upon Billy's mechanical knowledge.

"I very seldom ever tell (Cassius) much about driving. He has that genetic ability, and I think natural ability is definitely important," Billy said. "We've watched races all our lives, and we know if the car is going somewhere or if it's backing up. We're not ones to say, 'Oh, that's OK, we tried.' We've always been in sports, and we don't accept that -- he didn't when he was skiing. We do what we can to make anything better -- that's a family tradition.

"We just expect a lot out of ourselves."

Travis Barrett -- 621-5648

tbarrett@centralmaine.com