New Hampshire’s Third Groove
Even before the New Hampshire weekend it should have been clear that those
bulldozers Rusty Wallace recommended for New Hampshire Int’l Speedway are needed
to bulldoze his mouth, because his opinions are not worth a damn.
His driving wasn’t worth a damn at New Hampshire either – James Ince called
him a has-been after blocking Johnny Benson (a typical Rusty Wallace caper), and
just what was he thinking trying a dive-bomb move on Kyle Petty in One?
John Wall, Grand National North team owner and proud owner of two monstrous,
vicious attack dogs named Killer and Tiny – better known as adorably tiny
puppies who will love you to death – had the best line in response to Wallace’s
whines about the track – "My take is that the racing is a lot better now,
there are two or thre grooves and you can pass people. The problem with Winston
Cup is their racecars and their being a bunch of prima donnas. I think they’ve
gotten spoiled. They need to get out there, shut up, and race. The race in July
was a good race, the stands were full and everyone had a good time."
New Hampshire Int’l Speedway opened things up with Grand National North and
Brad Leighton’s bid for four straight at NHIS disappeared in the final 25 laps.
Leighton led for the majority of the 125 but Tracy Gordon hunted down Leighton
and nudged him out of the groove in Four, then Andy Santarre and Kelly Moore
freight-trained behind Gordon.
But the real fireworks erupted after Eddie Macdonald spun into the infield
grass of Turn One with ten to go. On the restart Matt Kobyluck exploded from
sixth up the outside – he came from so out of nowhere that there was dispute
over whether he jumped the restart – into the lead, just before Dennis Demers
spun, got clipped by Bobby Dragon and then smashed in the back by Carey Heath.
On the restrart Tracy Gordon dove low, Kobyluck swerved him to the pit wall, and
Gordon tagged Kobyluck into the first turn wall, setting up another two-to-go
restart won by Gordon for his first NHIS victory.
Matt Kobyluck said before the race, "We’re running all right. The
track’s pretty much the same though we came here with a harder compound tire.
It’s not difficult to pass here, you need the car to turn and come up off the
corner. I try not to pay attention to the Winston Cup controversy." But he
was sure paying attention to the controversy after the race – "Tracy did
his typical cat-and-mouse stuff on restarts. I dropped out and they were all
sleeping on the restart."
Gordon for his part called Kobyluck’s move "idiotic……he came down
(on the next restart) and he should have known better."
The North cars, running the same body styles as the Winston Cup cars, could
run two grooves in the turns, and they appeared to again disprove Brett Bodine’s
statement before the Saturday races that Winston Cup’s primary problem is in
aerodynamics and thus there is a need to cut down force. The North cars’ more
sure-footed handling of the track certainly showed that body styles alone are
not the problem here.
And that was just the beginning.
Jan Leaty did not have a terribly good weekend, timing in a provisional and
then finishing 35th. His car never ran right all weekend and the DNF was a
bitter end to his return to the track where his July win was among the most
liberating in motorsports this season.
Ted Christopher was the man most watched this weekend, timing a Pontiac in
the North 125 – this after his Chevrolet was so torn up at Watkins Glen that
"we didn’t have enough hand baskets to bring it up with," one of his
crew guys said – then timing third in the Modified 100, then clawing to finish
third in the SK Mod feature at Stafford on Friday night. His Stafford finish
wasn’t enough to derail Bo Gunning’s SK Mod track title this season, nor did it
particularly affect race winner Doug Coby.
After blowing up late in the North 125 Terrible Ted jumped into his Mystique
Motorsports #13 Chevrolet Modified. He burst into the lead on the start of the
100 and put half a straightaway on the field in the first 25 laps. Rick Fuller’s
blown left front tire caused the first yellow of the day, then Christopher
pitted very late on the yellow and restarted last.
>From there the battle erupted between Nevin George, Chuck Hossfeld, and
Eddie Flemke. The three fought for the lead and continued to fight for the lead;
George got loose after 50 laps and had to chase the #0 for a straightaway before
getting back up to speed. Flemke made moves in traffic that were at times quite
scary – he got loose on the restart, saved it, then went three wide into Turn
One to get the lead.
By Lap 60 Flemke and Hossfeld and the rest of the top five had settled into
line, Tony Hirschman had clawed into contention, and Christopher and Mike
Stefanik had worked into the top ten, but ten laps later Robbie Summers’ spin
set up the showdown. Dave Berube’s spin and a rather hard Zach Sylvester crash
on the backstretch stalled things and set up a 15-lap shootout to end all such
shootouts. Christopher clawed into fifth, but when Flemke and Hossfeld got side
by side with ten to go Stefanik and Christopher swamped Tony Hirschman and then
the top five ripped into the turns three abreast; Stefanik and Christopher had
the lead, went at it, and Hossfeld exploded through them three wide in Three,
had to fall back, then after Christopher roared up the outside of Stefanik in
the lead, Hossfeld made it stick three wide in the final three laps. Christopher
made a desperate three abreast attempt on the final lap and it almost exploded
into an enormous crash in Turn One; somehow they saved it and Hossfeld won.
"I was on the throttle and I felt I wouldn’t make it," Stefanik
said. "We tried to put ourselves in a position to win. We had a lot of
competitive cars. The Modifieds are awesome up here…..I was happy to see Chuck
get his first win here."
"It was wild," Christopher said after finishing fourth. "We
put on a good show."
"You better got to the guys up front," Tony Hirschman said after
finishing fifth. "The guys up front were doing a heck of a job bouncing
around all over the place. It shows what kind of drivers we got slamming around
at those kind of speeds, it’s an awesome bunch of guys."
"The way they were dicing up front," Jerry Marquis said after
finishing sixth, "I thought we might win this thing. These guys know how to
drive these cars on this track. I wish we could have mixed it up more, but we
had a good day and gained some points. We’re looking to Stafford to build on
this momentum now. The new restrictor plates we got are more consistent, so it’s
harder to pass now, they’re more even than they used to be."
Hossfeld for his part seemed somewhat overwhelmed by it all. "The draft
was really strong. I raced the Truck race at Daytona (in 2001), and you do draft
here as much as you do in the Truck at Daytona. It really makes for a
competitive race and an exciting race."
Even seasoned veteran observers were stunned at how ferocious it was. Dick
Berggren was rather subdued in describing the race as the most exciting he’d
seen this season. This season or the last few, it was certainly the most
savagely fought racing contest anyone had seen.
So with that wrapped up the weekend came to a waterlogged end as Ryan Newman
took a long-expected first Winston Cup win. The fifth driver behind Mark
Donohue, Bobby Allison, Rusty Wallace, and Jeremy Mayfield to win in NASCAR for
Roger Penske, Newman was the first pole-sitter this season to win, but it had to
come in unexpectedly hair-raising style amid a sea of lapped traffic and a
hard-charging Kurt Busch.
The schedule was an issue again – Brett Bodine stated that its length has
been an issue in terms of racing costs, and the rain made for renewed debate
over the 20-race stretch without a bye week in the summer and autumn.
As usual only two or three cars got through pre-race inspections clean –
Jerry Nadeau’s team among others had to shorten their wheelbase; other wide
front ends were caught, and hammers dealt with unapproved body raking.
The cars were all lousy in dirty air, but amid the two rain delays and cool
overcast weather before the final race-ending rain they looked even worse than
usual. There was Johnny Benson’s controversy with Rusty Wallace that cost him
the lead after by far his strongest run in the last several seasons, perhaps in
his career. There was Busch working through traffic and getting into the back of
Newman amid lapped cars several times. There was Tony Stewart, almost the only
car all day to work traffic reasonably well.
Ford took four of the top seven spots at the end while Pontiacs took 3/5ths
of the top five. Of all the brands in engagement this race, the Pontiacs looked
the best in traffic, and the Dodges by far the worst. Sterling Marlin limped
home 21st and it cost him the point lead to Mark Martin – who insisted "it
doesn’t matter who leads the points now, because we still have nine races to
go," and that the credit go to his team for all their work – while his
teammate Jimmy Spencer was the only Dodge to finish in the top fifteen, and all
he got was 15th. John Andretti finished 22nd after an ill-advised charge in Four
by Ward Burton sent both Dodges spinning and Burton limping to the pits for
repeated green-flag stops; Ward’s teammate Kenny Wallace overcame a busted spark
plug on the start to finish in the top twenty. Ray Evernham Motorsports had an
uninspiring day; Bill Elliott finished 23rd and Jeremy Mayfield 24th.
In all it proved rather spirited but also another exercise in frustration.
There were several comments by drivers about asphalt peeling up in Three and
Four, but more likely it was rubber being peeled up, a condition alluded to by
Chuck Hossfeld earlier. Drivers also kept commenting about sealer on the track,
even though no sealer was ever laid down. And while the turns will be repaved
for next year, a rumored conversion to concrete is unlikely and also unwise;
concrete has repeatedly proven at Bristol, Dover, and Nashville to be useless as
a racing surface, with no usable second groove to be found on high banking; only
on half-miles like Martinsville does concrete do any good; anywhere else it is
not worth anything.
Dover is next, and Mark Martin has won there three times and now appears to
have championship momentum over Marlin, though the top five are now separated by
just 67 points. Rusty Wallace’s dismal showing at NHIS, usually one of his
better tracks, doesn’t bode well as far as confidence in the point race with
nine races left. Ryan Newman’s win, though, does bode well for what now looks
like a sure rookie title – Don Miller played it cute when asked if Ryan’s future
wins for Penske would be with Ford.
Dover will see the debut of a different tire compound for the Winston Cup
cars, a compound whose effectiveness awaits the first practices as well as
preliminary racing. With the greater standardization of tires of recent, New
Hampshire may be interested in how this tire runs if something like it comes to
the Magic Mile next summer.
For now, though, New England racing fans got another treat this September.