In seven races at Loudon since moving to Joe Gibbs Racing, Kenseth has an average finish of 6.1 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and has finished sixth or better five times, with only one finish worse than ninth. Although he relinquished the point in the pits to his teammate Denny Hamlin on Lap 267 when the No. 11 elected to remain on the track, Kenseth moved back to the point on Lap 271 and held on to the finish.
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According to oddsmakers at Bovada.lv, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch are co-favorites to win this race, as each has been given 5/1 odds. It’s sparked the age-old discussion of whether NASCAR should begin taking wins away from drivers whose cars fail post-race inspection. Should Kenseth also receive a 15-point hit, he would drop from fourth to fifth in the standings to qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup. “It’ll be an emotional weekend for sure, but I’ve got a plan on how I’m going to approach the weekend, and I’m just going to stick to that plan and go about our work”.
“What we’re going to do, and the reason we bring it back to the R&D Center, is to look at what, if any, damage occurred to that vehicle”, O’Donnell continued. Then when you see them start missing the bottom or getting loose on the exits, then I went up there, tried to push them, and make them make mistakes.
It’s been the story throughout the Sprint Cup schedule, but perhaps nowhere more emphatically than the Magic Mile. Thanks to everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing.
Kenseth became the first driver since Kurt Busch in 2004 to win consecutive starts at New Hampshire. After a lap at 107.263 miles per hour in his Penske, Castroneves will start on the outside of the first row.
“It always feels good to win, but today especially”, Kenseth said.
NASCAR announced after the race that Kenseth’s winning auto had failed post-race inspection at the sanctioning body’s laser inspection station.
Busch starts second on the front row with pole victor Jimmie Johnson on Sunday (Monday Manila time). “Wins are what matters most and we were able to do that in this race past year and we would like to be able to do it again”. “I don’t think anybody really is leaps and bounds out there running away from it”. The practical on-track effect for drivers has been more off-throttle time, with a resulting decrease in speed through the centers of the corners and a consequent increase in the number of passing zones. We just had to get there. Brad Keselowski headed into Sunday’s race riding a wave of momentum from two consecutive wins at Kentucky Speedway and Daytona International Speedway.
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“I guess they’re big numbers”, Busch said. But last week I felt like if all the stars were aligned we could have won at [Kentucky Motor Speedway], if everything went just for right for us.
