With Chevrolet in command at the Winston Cup level and Toyota dominating the Trucks, Dodge has been largely left behind, winless in Trucks and largely unnoticed in Winston Cup despite Kasey Kahne's superb season. At New Hampshire two Dodge combatants seeking to make some noise are Bill Wilburn and Brian Hoar. They have little in common other than involvement with Dodges in NASCAR. Bill Wilburn is in his first race as Kyle Petty's new crew chief, and his presence has begun to show with a qualifying effort by Petty that may not have been spectacular but it showed an improvement for Kyle that for the moment has been rather dramatic. Needing to make races on speed for now, Kyle ran two laps at NHIS and busted out a rather dramatic improvement in his second lap, an improvement that locked him into the race right away.
Wilburn's presence has certainly instilled a new confidence in the Petty team. "We didn't qualify where we wanted to, but it wasn't bad," Wilburn says. The improvement in Petty's second lap "is really good. He's been okay at Loudon in the past but it's been several years since he had a really good qualifying run. 27th is an improvement and we're trying to carry that improvement into Dover and keep improving."
Changes to Petty's car from NHIS in July involve being "a little different in some spring areas, front-end settings and geometry are a little different. We've worked quite a bit on our shock program. I've only been here a few days, and hopefully confidence will build with Kyle as we go."
The 45 and 43 "are really close. Things have gone pretty smootly and we want to get the 43 and 45 up to the front." While their setups are not exactly the same, there appears to be greater similarity than in the past. Certainly Wilburn should fit well here as his very early signs with the organization have been quite encouraging.
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Brian Hoar does not appear to have any Winston Cup aspirations, as he seems to be making a nice career out of the Busch East in his #45 Goss Dodge. A strong effort by Hoar in Busch East's NH 125 came amid an epidemic of crashes, including a running confrontation between Stafford veteran Matt Kobyluck and strong-running newcomer Sean Caisse, driving one of Andy Santarre's Chevys. The fireworks began when Caisse got into Kobyluck and Kobyluck found the wall, and then escalated in a spectacular melee in Turn Three when Kobyluck, who'd been rapping Caisse's back bumper even up the middle of a three-wide run off Turn Two, let him have it and Brad Leighton's #35 Ford became the innocent victim. Leighton's hit in Three was as hard as one can remember in some time, and it got Kobyluck parked by NASCAR and left Caisse out of any contention for the win.
Kelly Moore survived the fireworks and beat Hoar in a race shortened by 20 laps due to SPEED Channel time constraints for covering the Craftsman Trucks scheduled for that afternoon on The Magic Mile. Hoar's strong run nonetheless carried the torch for Dodge, and it came with a nosepiece different from the nosepieces of other Dodges in the weekend's racing. "The nose we ran is an old one," Hoar said afterward. "We're running the Intrepid body while those others have the Charger body, which has more downforce. We put a new body on our cars when in January they changed the rules and allowed the Charger. We decaled and painted the body and rear windows to make it look like the Charger. We're a Dodge dealer and we wanted to run the Charger. This is more a speedway body, more of a Daytona-Talladega-type body."
Regardless of what particular model year his car was, Brian Hoar certainly made some noise for Dodge at New Hampshire.
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