From the left, Dave, Alex, and Courtney O'Blenis at their family's garage in Boundary Creek, N.B. All three drive in stock car races and have won a combined 169 first-place trophies in major races.Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail
Dave O’Blenis is a snowplow driver in rural New Brunswick. On summer weekends he drives something smaller and much faster. With 104 victories in feature races over 30 years, the 51-year-old ranks among the most decorated stock-car drivers in the Maritimes.
“I started drag racing at 18 and realized I couldn’t afford it,” O’Blenis says. “Then I found a street stock car for $800 and that’s how this all got started.”
The O’Blenis family’s legacy includes his grandfather, grandmother and dad, who were inducted in 2019 as builders into the Maritime Motorsports Hall of Fame.
His daughters, Alex and Courtney, drive race cars, too.
Among the three of them, they have collected 169 first-place trophies in major races.
Stock cars are automobiles that have not been modified from their original factory configuration. The term is used to differentiate such a car from a race car, which is custom-built and designed only for racing purposes. NASCAR is the world’s most famous stock-car series, but thousands upon thousands of drivers compete in smaller local races.
Dave drives in the top-tier Pro Stock division within New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island’s Super Late Model Series. The siblings compete one level below in the Sportsman class. They all race mostly at Speedway 660, which is in Geary near Fredericton, and at the Petty International Raceway in River Glade, a short drive from Moncton.
From the left, Courtney and Alex O'Blenis, with Kara Whitney, work on a stock car.Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail
Together they carry on a Canadian grassroots tradition, and are better at it than most. When it comes to finances they are not poor but it is fair to say they are not the Petty family, either.
“When I started I was a billionaire,” Dave O’Blenis says with a laugh. “Now I have got $100,000. Without family and sponsors, I couldn’t race a bicycle.”
The O'Blenis family's racing legacy includes Dave's grandfather, grandmother and dad, who were inducted in 2019 as builders into the Maritime Motorsports Hall of Fame.Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail
On Saturday and Sunday the O’Blenises will compete at the annual Speed Weekend at Speedway 660, where Dave hopes to win his sixth championship in the 250-lap Pro Stock division. Alex and Courtney will each vie for their second titles in the 150-lap Sportsman class. Most of the time – no matter where it is – they all race on the same card.
Occasionally, Dave drops down to the Sportsman division and they all race against one another. Alex has beaten her father a handful of times. In 2016, she went right to the front in one race and then had to fend him off. “I was on her bumper for 75 laps and I couldn’t capitalize,” Dave O’Blenis says. Each lap around is one-third of a mile. “She never slipped even once. Someone said to me, ‘Aw, you let her win.’ I told them that’s a lot of bull.
“We are all so competitive that we want to beat each other.”
Alex, 26, teaches Grade 8 math and science in River Glade. She has won 38 feature races.
Courtney, 24, is a mom to a 2½-year-old son named Axel – spelled like the rock musician Rose and not a car part. She works as a forklift operator but previously was a welder and has also worked with autistic children. She has won 27 feature races.
Alex O'Blenis works on a stock car at her family's garage. She has won 27 feature races.
Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail
On the same Sunday last year that Dave reached the milestone of 100 career victories with a win in Pro Stock, Courtney and Alex finished first and second in the Sportsman feature.
The girls accompanied their dad to tracks when they were young.
“We played in the pits with the jacks,” Alex says. “We’d stand on them and somebody would jack us up.”
They grew up in Boundary Creek, a tiny unincorporated community fewer than 20 kilometres southwest of Moncton. As they got older, their father taught them to drive all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles.
“I was always trying to teach them to drive something,” Dave says. “Finally at one point I thought maybe I should get them into racing.”
When Courtney was 11, her father drove to North Carolina and bought her a Bandolero and trailered it home.
Bandoleros are entry-level small-size race cars for teenagers and kids as young as eight and are equipped with small 30-horsepower engines. They have an enclosed cockpit and can reach 80 miles an hour on straightaways.
“With two sisters, he couldn’t come back with just one,” Courtney says. “He had to get one for each of us.”
Their dad gave them driving lessons and they competed in a race for the first time the following year. Courtney fared okay, but Alex crashed shortly after the start. She was behind two cars that avoided another Bandolero stalled in the middle of the track and she ran into it head-on.
“I had nowhere to go,” she recalls.
Dave O'Blenis shows off some trophies at his home in Boundary Creek, N.B.Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail
She escaped with only bruises from the seat belt harness, the first of many accidents in her career. “I have more wrecks than wins,” she says good-naturedly.
Alex drove Bandoleros full-time for the next two years and then graduated to the Street Stock division at the end of her third season. She competed in it for two years and graduated to the Sportsman Class when she was 17.
She won championships in 2021 and 2022 and is third in this year’s points standing. “It’s been a down year but I haven’t finished worse than fifth,” Alex says. She has won a dozen feature races in the past couple of years but none this summer.
“It’s not for a lack of trying,” she says.
Courtney started in Bandoleros, moved into Street Stock and has raced in the Sportsman class for a half-dozen years.
“One of the big lessons I have learned is that you have to be patient,” she says. “You get into a race and something happens that gets you upset and you drive harder and are more likely to make a mistake. You can’t force your way through.”
Both she and Courtney repair and prepare their own cars. They work out of a shop in Boundary Creek where their father works beside them on his own. The family even makes its own car parts.
“There is a down-home-roots quality to them,” says Brent Dunphy, the former race director at Speedway 660. “People like them are few and far between. I’ve seen every type of racer there is. They do it all.”
Courtney O'Blenis hugs her son Axel.Chris Donovan/The Globe and Mail
Hudson Weston has driven against the sisters in the Sportsman Class and Dave in Pro Stock.
“Alex is a very smooth driver and Courtney is the more aggressive one,” says Weston, who lives in St. Martins, N.B. “They both are very talented.”
He will bump heads with Dave O’Blenis again on Sunday.
“Around the Maritimes Dave is considered a legend,” Weston says. “It has been my goal this year to beat him and have come close but haven’t done it yet.”
Dave rarely worries about Alex and Courtney crashing. “I’m more nervous that something on their cars is going to break,” he says.
He teased Alex that he planned to drop down into the Sportsman class this weekend. “I told her I was going to kick her butt,” he says. “I don’t want either of them to beat me. It’s a little selfish but it is true. "