Catchfence

The prerace concert at New Hampshire Motor Speedway featured the group Kansas, who performed their breakthrough hit “Carry On Wayward Son” among other tunes. As it turned out, Neil Sedaka could have been added as well, for “Laughter In The Rain” would have been appropriate for the waterlogged ending of the Lenox 301, a race billed as “going the extra mile” but which ended 17 of them short.

The Lenox 301 produced the most unexpected top ten finishing order in some years, and with that there were plenty of winners and some losers from it all. A breakdown of the race’s winners and losers -

WINNER: SMI. Some of their previous debut race weekends of tracks owned by them were remembered more for what went wrong than anything else. That wasn’t the case here, as the first race weekend for the Magic Mile under SMI auspices was so smooth despite uncooperative weather that one might not have even noticed that track ownership had changed.

WINNER: Kurt Busch. This choice is obvious on one hand but more than just that going forward. The race he ran was a struggle for a substantial time – “We were working really hard to get our Dodge to turn all day,” Bush said. As the race went on he began inching upward, and Pat Tryson’s gamble on fuel in the final third was a racing equivalent of a play-action pass in a weekend that had seen several play-action-flavored race calls – “I wouldn’t be where we are if it weren’t for the crew,” Busch made clear. The win was only his third top-ten of the season’s first half, and the gutsy call by Tryson is the kind that can ignite a high-quality team like Busch’s,especially with tracks Busch is usually very good at coming up.

WINNER: Dodge. An ugly day, yes. Bobby Labonte timed on the front row and from there kept struggling not to lose spots, losing such battles again and again with a car that crossed up off Four several times. Busch fought to get his Dodge’s push out. Reed Sorenson “struggled with rear grip all day in our Target Dodge,” he noted afterward. The Gillett-Evernham Dodges either went backwards from good starts (Elliott Sadler and Patrick Carpentier) or surged orward and then got swatted away by circumstance (Kasey Kahne). Ryan Newman was the only competitive Dodge for seemingly the longest time.

Yet when it came down to the final 50 laps Busch, Sadler, Sorenson, and Labonte – in substantial part by pitting when the leaders stayed out on a caution enteing the final 90 laps – all came home in the top ten.

Call how they got there ugly – there’s no lack of justification in doing so. But Dodge putting all four of its teams into the top ten at the end is a display of competitive depth the program needs, and needs to keep building on. “We’ve come a long way the last three months,” Elliott Sadler said afterward, a good summation of Dodge’s ew Hampshire effort.

WINNER: Michael Waltrip. Entering NHMS his best finish was 23rd; a wildcard victory bid at Talladega was his only competitive noise all year. His gloating after the race was typical Michael Waltrip, boasting as though he were better than he actually is and amid some negative scuttlebutt about the future of the team he owns, scuttlebutt he seemed to acknowledge in the postrace interview. Nonetheless, it’s a finish he will try to build on.

WINNER: Martin Truex. DEI is another team about which some concern about its future can be felt amid rumor the team will contract to three cars. Truex’s superb day-long effort and strong finish are a shot in the arm the team needed amid dismal results forthe rest of the fleet.

WINNER: Joe Gibbs Racing. Putting two cars in the top-15 is penny-ante stuff; dominating as they did for so long with Tony Stewart and despite a surprising of-day for Kyle Busch is sign, as if we needed it, of a team in control of the 2008 season.

LOSERS: The F1 rejects. Kyle Busch’s day went from bad to worse when he go ambushed under yellow by Juan Montoya, who got docked two laps by NASCAR as a result. It was yet another dismal day for Montoy in a season that is resembling Nigel Mansell’s 1994 CART season – after a sparkling first year, Mansell collapsed in the second season and was gone from the series. With a revolving door of crew chiefs, Montoya looks to be going nowhere in NASCAR.

Former CART/IRL drivers Carpentier, Sam Hornish, and Dario Franchitti looked lost. Carpentier won the pole and after leading a few early laps steadily disappeared from the lead lap. Franchitti timed shockingly well and then disappeared from contention and then crashed. Sam Hornish, the more he runs the worse he seems to get, ending his day with another crash.

LOSER: Kyle Busch. Though he retained the point lead, he at no point looked like a championship contender in this NHMS race. Laying a big egg of a performance was defimnately not what he needed entering Daytona.

WINNER: Casey Mears. Now a lame duck, Mears led over 50 laps and came home seventh, by far his best effort of the season.

LOSER: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Talk about contrasts with Casey Mears. For Junior the downfall of the day began with a superior run; it steadily eroded; it finally disintegrated when he started for pit road and was rammed by Jamie McMurray. Thus was possible momentum from the Michigan win destroyed.

LOSER: Dieter Mateschitz’s Toyotas. A.J. Allmendinger qualified strongly and ran well, but erupted in flame after 200 laps, while Brian Vickers limped home a disappointing 16th after a top-five effort. Despite this chuckhole the weekend gave further evidence of a win in the team’s near-future.

So with the Magic Mile wrapped up until September the season returns to where it started in February for its annual July 4 extravaganza.