By Lou Modestino
Smoke smoked his competition, again, in his Sylvania 300 drive around the New Hampshire Motor Speedway mile.
Tony Stewart won another fuel economy run on Sunday at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the second week in a row. He inherited the lead from Clint Boyer who ran out of gas just a few laps from the finish. Brad Keselowski, Greg Biffle, Jeff Gordon and Brian Vickers got the leftovers, second through fifth. Kenseth, Boyer, Regan, Carl Edwards and Montoya completed the top ten. As a result of his win Stewart leads The Chase points by +7. In victory lane he told the interviewer that “Coming into this race we had a good opportunity. We also got rid of some dead weight during the week and things should be better. Close to the end of the race, I saw Boyer slow down and I knew he ran out of gas. I said to Oh no! He had a better car than us! The engine and chassis from Hendrick was working out well.
Second place driver Keselowski, now third in The Chase points made some revelations. “We made some good adjustments when we made a pit stop with 120 laps to go. We were a top ten car.”
Fourth place Jeff Gordon commented. “It’s frustrating for us. Fuel mileage hurt us today. Tony and his team are doing better on the fuel management. But, we did get a top five today in spite of our problems.”
Not so fortunate was Denny Hamlin who also ran out of fuel. “We thought that we had enough to finish but we came up dry.” Jimmie Johnson complained that he and Kyle Busch had problems on the track going for position and indicated that he was blocked by him. “You never know what’s going to happen, ” he said. Johnson ended up 19th overall and dropped to tenth in the point chase. JR ended the day in 18th and is eighth in The Chase points. “We had some tire problems and I’m really frustrated, ” he said.
Kyle Busch dominated Saturday’s F.W. Webb 175 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Kyle started on the pole and led all but 10 of the 175 laps. He lost the lead during a green-flag pit stop late in the race. Busch finished 3.8 seconds ahead of Austin Dillon for his sixth win of the season and the 30th of his truck career. Dillon, in the process took over the Camping World Truck Series points lead, with a two-point edge over James Buescher, who was seventh. Kevin Harvick was next then Hornaday Jr., Johnny Sauter and Matt Crafton. The top-six drivers were the only ones on the lead lap.
In his victory interview, Ray Dunlap asked Kyle ” If he thought he stunk up the show? Kyle answered with a smirk “It was a nice race. It was fun for me but not the others.” He led for a total of 165 laps. Dillon said “We were close an learned a lot and made up a lot of time on the pit stops. He went on, “The championship is still on my mind. We were also able to keep up with Kyle and I wish the race had been closer. Racing with the Cup drivers is good for us and it makes us step up our competition.” Sprint Cup driver Harvick revealed,” The Trucks are fun to drive.”