Maritime motorsports photographer and archivist, Ken MacIssac, caught up with Maine racer Cassius Clark recently. Clark is one of the highest-profile, most successful racers out of New England these days, and with a Maritime connection since he teamed up with Rollie MacDonald’s Pictou-based King Racing. Clark has two PASS titles, PASS North, and PASS National, as well as wins at Speedway’s 660’s annual 250-lap event and at Scotia Speedworld’s Atlantic Cat 250. The two spoke about Clark’s racing career as well as his success with King Racing, and what lies ahead for 2016. Ken’s interview and photo gallery follow… —————————- KM – The first time I saw you race, or even heard of you, was at Oxford, and you were in a Legend car. CC – That’s where I started. Raced Legend Cars for three years. KM – When I was young and going to Oxford in the mid 80’s, your dad was one of the top dogs.  He must have played a big part in getting you involved in racing? CC – Oh yes. Without him, I wouldn’t be racing stock cars, that’s for sure. Dad raced anything back then. Downhill skiing, canoes, snowmobiles… he was one of the top ski racers in New England at one time. KM – So tell me how it all started? CC – When dad stopped racing, around ‘92, we didn’t even go to the races for a while. We’d go to Boothbay in the summers, and the guy in the boat next to us (Ed Chapman) ended up getting a Legends Car. That was around ’98.  He raced it himself for a few years. I hung around with his boy, and then he started racing, at around 15.  Then I said, well I want to go racing too. KM – So you guys bought a Legends Car and raced with them? CC – Well, before all that, we bought a go-cart from Andy Shaw, and I was going to race it. But the damn thing blew up, and I never really had the time to stay with it.  I was pretty big into downhill ski racing. That took a lot of my time and interest. So when I decided I wanted to go Legends racing, we ended up trading a jet ski for a Legends Car. We bought one of Chubby Howe’s old Legends Cars, painted it up, and raced that for three years. We raced everywhere.  A lot of tracks. Raced in Canada, Las Vegas, Florida, all over the place. It was a good experience. We did pretty well, won Rookie Of The Year in ‘99, won the 2000 NELCAR championship, and then won the Thursday Thunder championship at Beech Ridge in 2000 and 2001. KM – Las Vegas. Was that the Legends Nationals? CC – It was.  2001. Someone towed us out there, we got seventh in that one.  Jonathan Davenport won it. He’s a World Of Outlaws dirt late model racer now. He was a helluva Legends racer. But Kyle Busch and I started beside each other in the main. That was back when he was racing the truck and they kicked him out that weekend, because he was too young. So he came back to his home track in Vegas and ran the Legends race with us. KM – How did he finish? CC – I beat him so….that was cool… KM – Did you move directly from the Legends Car to a pro stock? And was that your plan, pro stock? CC – I did. I kind of  wanted to move up anyway. Then one day, I put the thing for sale on the internet, and Ed (Chapman) caught wind of it.  He wanted to know why we were selling the car, and what we were going to do. He just stepped up basically. We didn’t talk to anyone, we just sort of, threw some bait out there to see if anything would happen. So he decided he wanted to own a race car for us. We met him up in Rangely (ME,) and he asked what we wanted to run,  ACT, PASS, Busch North?  Really, that was quite a step from Legends, but I’m not the type to get intimidated. I knew it was a big step but I thought we could do well; obviously, my dad knew what he was doing. Ed gave us everything we needed. KM – Your first car came from up here, in Nova Scotia? CC – He got that first PASS car for us from Dan Eddy. He traded a couple of Pro Trucks to him. Dan was running a driving school up there (NS) then. KM – So you jumped right into the PASS Tour? CC – Oh yes. But it took longer to get the car here than we planned, and it just a few days before the opener at Oxford, so we didn’t have time to take dismantle the car and go over it like we wanted. That first year we just ran it like that and learned  as we went.  It was good for me to start out with. Anyway, we missed  the first  Oxford race by one or two spots.  Then we went to Fredericton. That was the first PASS race I was ever in. I ended up staying on the lead lap,  we got 11th or 12th. After that we went to Unity but  broke the A-frame off in the main. We took it to Andy Shaw to get repaired.  That car was a Hanley car,  an older design, but a good car. We ran that car all of 2002. In ’03, we took it back to Oxford for the first race but  crashed it. Then we went to Wiscasset, crashed it again. That pretty much wiped it out so we needed something right away.  Jeff Taylor (Distance Racing)  had a chassis sitting there. We had something like two weeks off so we brought it back, put it together, painted it, and ran it. KM – I always thought you ran that Hanley chassis for years? CC – Nope. I mean, that was the plan, but it didn’t work out that way.  That Taylor chassis was the only car I ran after that. I even took it south and ran it for a guy down there. KM – Why did you go south? CC – The company  I was working for folded so I went to North Carolina just to hang out, to do something different. My sister and brother in law are there.  I wanted to see if I could do some racing down there too. KM – Were you still racing for Ed Chapman then, or Dickie Woodman? CC –  Ed was moving out of it that point and we weren’t sure if he was going to do anything, but our first race south was in Ed’s car at Greenville Pickens. We ended up getting crashed out there, but that’s where I first met Andrew Hicken (now King Racing car chief.) KM – It’s funny because I was shooting (photography) that race too.  I didn’t know Andrew at the time but he was helping Dean Clattenburg (Dartmouth, NS, native) that day.  I think that was the first time I met Andrew, too. CC – You’re right, he was helping Clattenburg there. So the week after Greenville-Pickens,  PASS had the Mason Dixon Meltdown in South Boston, Virginia.  I was just going to stay down there and try to get the car back together. Anyway,  Jeff Fultz told Dickie Woodman, who is from Maine, that we could use his shop to put the car back together. Dickie was operating  out of Fultz’ shop as well.  It was just my dad and I there working on the car there and Andrew was there working with Dickie. He ended up helping us. We worked all week on the car and ended up going to South Boston with Dickie and Andrew. KM – You did pretty good that year. CC – We did. Won the PASS National Championship, the very first one they had. KM – So did Ed Chapman get out of racing at this time? CC – Ed wasn’t really sure what he was doing. I didn’t have a plan and Fultz wanted to get me a ride. His spotter Randy Wilson had a car and that’s who I drove for down south. It was an old All Pro car. Andrew and I worked nights on it. We stripped it… painted it black… did well with it… never won – but led a bunch of races…we ran that car for a little over a year. KM – And that’s when you moved back home? CC – I wasn’t really doing much else down there so I moved back home and ended up getting into the trailer business myself. I didn’t race for a year or so, but Andrew and I stayed friends. KM – So this leads up to the Hight 77 PASS car? CC – We hooked up late in 2011, had a good year in 2012 with three wins and we finished second in points. We won the PASS championship in 2013. I stayed with the team up until the middle of 2015.  I still get along with them great. It just wasn’t really working out the way either of us expected for results so we mutually decided to try other avenues. KM – So, for the last couple of years you’ve been running select events in Rollie’s No. 13. CC – Rollie’s treated me well since the first time I met him.  He has top notch gear.  I started with them doing special events only then we were running more often. It’s a lot of travelling, but I like racing. KM – One maritime track that’s been pretty good to you is Speedway 660. CC – Yes, we’ve been fortunate to have some great runs there. Andrew has a great set-up for the track and everything went right for our two big wins there. That track deosn’t really compare to any other track but I’ve always liked it, and my debut in a pro stock was there back in 2002. KM – And we can’t leave Scotia Speedworld out, you’ve seen a lot of success there, too. CC – We won there a few times too. Scotia is a smaller flat track like those we are used to racing on in Maine. I always seemed to have good cars there even back when we ran there with PASS. It’s a track that seems to suit my driving style fairly well. KM – So what’s 2016 looking like? CC – Our plans are to start next weekend in Bangor (Speedway 95 on May 15) with the PASS Tour. We are really looking forward to getting the season started, hopefully with a win. We plan on running the bigger races in Canada and Maine and see how everything goes. I am hoping that the better we do, the more we race. I am really looking forward to racing with Rollie and  Andrew in the King Racing car. Photo Gallery
