BEDFORD, Pa. – Jeff Rine’s final race of the year left him with a slight grimace Saturday at Bedford Speedway, the defeat to Max Blair and his backup car at the Keystone Cup raising disappointment.
“It’s [a] $16,000 difference … it is what it is,” Rine said of receiving his $9,000 runner-up earnings in relation to $25,000, which he could’ve won from the pole.
“It was still a good night,” Rine added, not letting his immediate feelings diminish what otherwise became a memorable weekend.
On Friday night, Rine and his Elbin Racing crew celebrated their seventh Bedford title together, doing so in a special way at Pennsylvania’s oldest active dirt track.
Rine and his team honored their longtime car owner Bob Elbin Sr. with a tribute F-100 livery, the same number and colors the late racer drove in the 1960s.
This past weekend marked Bedford’s first event without Elbin Sr., the nine-time track champion car owner who died Sept. 28 at the age of 88.
“I just have to thank the Elbin family for letting me drive this thing for like 15 years,” Rine said. “We’re like family.
“They all mean a lot,” Rine added of the significance of another track title with the Elbins. “You bust your butt all year long. This one means a lot because we lost Bob, but he was there for all the years.”
Elbin is well-known for driving Walter Dyer’s famous Brickmobile No. 461 sprint car in 1972. He is survived by his wife, Leona, of 69 years, four children, 12 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.
“He did so much for racing,” Rine said. “[The Elbins] live to race, and they still live to race.”
The Elbins have played an instrumental part in Rine’s success across the Pennsylvania area over the past decade and a half. On Fridays, Rine devotes his talents to the Elbin No. 92 late model.
On Saturdays, he criss-crosses between Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway and Selinsgrove (Pa.) Speedway in his No. 2 late model. Rine wrapped up his 14th Selinsgrove championship in August in which he edged Dylan Yoder by 50 points for another record-adding title.
The Danville, Pa., driver placed fourth in the Port Royal standings, 160 points off Yoder’s championship mark at the conclusion of the 18-race run.
“We’re happy with that, it was a good year,” said Rine, now the winner of six of the last 12 combined championships decided at Bedford, Port Royal and Selinsgrove since 2018.
On Saturday, Rine led Pennsylvania’s largest-paying unsanctioned late model race of the year to green thanks to winning Friday’s semi-feature and Saturday’s rescheduled dash.
Rine led by eight cars through 10 laps, but as he worked his way into traffic, he didn’t have a great feeling.
“I knew I was abusing [my ties],” Rine said. “When I was getting by the lapped cars, I was getting free, they were getting hot, and it happens.”
Blair was already charging hard, blasting into second from the sixth-starting position with his new race car, and it didn’t take long for a shift in momentum.
On lap 22, Rine slipped out of the groove while Blair stayed low off turn two, getting the run he needed for position underneath Rine down the backstretch.
Blair completed the go-ahead pass on the other end of the five-eighths-mile clay oval and Rine was just along for the ride.
“We were in that lapped traffic, it was pretty tight lapped traffic, and it was really hard to get around them,” Rine said. “I overheated the tires, and it got really slimy there. Like the car got real free on me. My dad was giving me signals, and he showed me he closed on me hard.
“I just didn’t have enough time to get the tires cooled down once I got by the lapped cars,” Rine added. “Once I did, the car came back a little bit, but he was long gone.”