New Hampshire a tough track to tame
LOUDON, N.H. -- This is New Hampshire. Who knows?
That's the most honest, legitimate answer I've been able to give, from my Wednesday live chat through right now, about my pick to win Sunday's Lenox Industrial Tools 301.
You look back through the last four years here, and in eight races you find eight different winners: Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman in 2005, Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick in '06, Denny Hamlin and Clint Bowyer in '07, and Kurt Busch and Greg Biffle last year.
This is the sort of thing you used to see at Talladega in the late 20th century. "Thirteen races, 13 faces," track publicists used to brag about the summer crapshoots at Casino de Alabama. But that was because of the fickleness of the draft, and whoever popped out front at the checkered flag.
You'd figure that on a flat, tight-turned 1-mile oval like New Hampshire Motor Speedway -- just a maddening place for which to find the right chassis setup -- somebody could get a handle on the place and keep it. But Kurt Busch was the last to win both races here, in 2004.
"I honestly don't have a good answer for you," said Stewart, who is on the pole because the starting order was determined by points after Friday's rainout of qualifying.
"Every year this track changes a little bit," Stewart continued, "and every year somebody gets a little bit better on what it takes to be good here."
And the key: "This is a unique place, and I think that's the reason guys every year kind of hit or miss it."
And the summer storms of New England: "Obviously the weather has played factors at a couple of these races and changed the outcome," Stewart continued.
He should know about the weather, having dominated this race last year until the rain came after he'd pitted and Kurt Busch stayed out, leaving Busch to win.
But Kurt Busch pointed out yet another reason for eight winners in eight races: "You could say the new car adds a different twist," he said, "because we continue to come back to the race tracks that we've seen before with completely different setups."
That is, with the constant scramble to get an edge with the fitful new car, teams are constantly changing their setups -- notebooks from previous races at given tracks don't matter anymore.
Because New Hampshire is so tight, so maddeningly difficult to pass on, winning "has a lot to do with pit strategy," Kurt Busch said. "Once you get toward the end, you pit, and then stay out as long as you can. … It's like a road course, where you pit as soon as you can to make it to the end, and then stay out and hang on."
Jeff Gordon, who'll start alongside Stewart on Sunday but hasn't won here since 1998, concurred that "because track position and pit strategy play out so much here that you'll get guys taking some big risks. Obviously last year here, Kurt Busch took a big risk by staying out when it rained, and that paid off for them.
"Then you've seen guys take two tires, no tires, you just see so many different strategies that have paid off here," Gordon said. "The fastest car doesn't always win … [but] it's more true here than others because it is tough to pass. With the aerodynamics, especially with this car, being out front is huge."
Carl Edwards, winless this season in Cup, has never won here but will start fifth. He has no idea whether he can break out of his doldrums here, except that his Roush Fenway team has been running stronger lately. He won a Nationwide race on a similar 1-mile track at Milwaukee last week, but that technology doesn't translate well to the new car in Cup.
"This track is straightforward -- it's very smooth, it's a perfect oval, it's a very, very technical track," Edwards said. "So I've come here and had the fastest car … [and] I've come here when I couldn't run 20th to save my life."
Hamlin usually runs better here than anyone else, but he has only the one win to show for it.
"I know we've had a lot of success here each time we've been here, but we've been here with a different setup every single time," said Hamlin, who'll start seventh by points. "It's just a real hard track to kind of perfect and get right.
"I think the drivers make up for a little bit," Hamlin continued, "but I think for the team guys, I don't think we've got it figured out on the car side yet.
"I don't think anyone has."
As I said, it's New Hampshire. Who knows?
Ed Hinton is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at edward.t.hinton@espn3.com.
