N. Hampshire race has big implications

Contenders for the “Chase” could
benefit from a victory this weekend.

By MIKE HARRIS

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Titles, nicknames and catch phrases abound in sports. So it’s not surprising that we now have “The Race to the Chase,” the unofficial name for the next 10 stops on the NASCAR Nextel Cup schedule.

Sunday’s Lenox Industrial Tools 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway is the 17th race of the season.

When the Cup drivers return to Loudon, N.H., for the Sylvania 300 Sept. 16, it will be the start of the 10-race Chase for the championship in which only the top 12 drivers are eligible to win the title.

Question

So how much can it mean to the drivers who hope to win the championship to run well at NHIS in July?

“It’s definitely a race that you need to run well in just because the first race at New Hampshire leads into the second race at New Hampshire,” said Kurt Busch, who has two Cup wins on the 1.058-mile oval. “If you have success in July, it usually translates into a good race in September.”

Busch, who won the first Chase in 2004, is currently 16th in the standings, trailing 12th-place Dale Earnhardt Jr. by 171 points.

“We don’t have that much time to make up ground, so we’ve got to start doing that at New Hampshire,” he said. “We need to start picking up some points and I think we can do it. This team is really coming together and, with our new crew chief, Pat Tryson, I feel like there’s a renewed optimism and a very positive feeling.”

The big question mark this year is NASCAR’s new Car of Tomorrow, which will make its eighth race appearance and first at New Hampshire Sunday.

Does that mean the teams can just throw away their notes from previous races there?

Half and half

“So far it’s been 50-50 on the tracks where we’ve run the COT cars,” Busch said. “As far as the way that some of your past leads right into the new car for the good, and then it goes for the bad as well. So there’s new things and new concerns that come up each and every week with the car.

“And, so far, on the flat tracks like Richmond and Phoenix, we’ve done well at Penske Racing. So we feel like that can help us this weekend with starting off pretty good out of the gate with our COT Dodge Avenger.”

Greg Erwin, crew chief for 17th-place Greg Biffle, 199 points behind Earnhardt, said, “Were taking the same car we raced earlier this year at Dover and finished sixth. Right now, we feel that this is our best COT car.

“We tested a car similar to this at Milwaukee and feel that this is our best bet for this weekend. We had a good run last weekend at Infineon [finishing fifth] and, if we can keep it up for the next few weeks, we’ll be able to gain some ground on the top 12.”

The drivers closest behind Earnhardt heading into Sunday’s race are Ryan Newman (96 points behind) and Jamie McMurray (129).