2018 New Hampshire Postmotems

The in-car view of Kevin Harvick's run to victory at New Hampshire



LOUDON, NH - 2018's New England 300 weekend arrived and the end result was the first true one-on-one showdown between the Cup series' Big Three - Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, and Martin Truex.  The showdown came with a bump-and-run attack by Kevin Harvick on Busch, and the result was the sixth win of the season for Harvick and eighth for Stewart-Haas Racing, this atop a superb effort by Aric Almirola and good effort from Kurt Busch (who led the most laps in the race).  It all added up to a huge week for team co-owner Tony Stewart after the Eldora Truck 150 at his dirt track in Rossburg, OH got a lot of hype before and afterward.


There were as always notable postmortems -



For almost the first time this year, Chevrolet actually showed some improvement -

The often-graphic lack of muscle or competitive depth by Chevrolet in 2018 has been one of the big stories of the year, but here at New Hampshire three Chevrolets finished in the top ten and five in the top twelve.   Chase Elliott led 23 laps, this after leading just nineteen all season, and his fifth-place finish was only the sixth top-ten this season and first since Sears Point.   But it was the way he ran down race leader Martin Truex and challenged using lapped cars as a pick that was eye-opening; Elliott has run up front a lot in his two-and-a-half Cup seasons but always was missing something as far as learning how to finish off such runs.

Jimmie Johnson's tenth was his seventh top-ten of the season.

Ryan Newman finished a surprising sixth, his second top-ten in three races.    

It was a curiously quiet day for Kyle Larson, anointed in some of the satellite radio chatter during the week as the most talented driver in the garage.

Chevy's improvement didn't translate to their other two teams - the Daugherty-Geschtecker Chevrolets struggled as Chris Buescher finished 20th and AJ Allmendinger was taken out by Kasey Kahne early in the race.   Bubba Wallace and the Petty 43 finished a dismal 24th and added to that embarrassment by being the pick on Kevin Harvick's decisive pass on Kyle Busch.



Almirola now making some competitive noise - 

Aric Almirola has been competitive in the SHR 10 this season, but since being taken out by Austin Dillon at Daytona he'd been the quiet member of the team most of the season.   That's been changing with 70 laps led at Chicagoland and 42 at New Hampshire, as well as a whale of a fight for fourth toward the end of the race with Chase Elliott where they swapped the spot several times over several laps.   

Christopher Bell opens eyes in Lakes Region 200 -JGR Busch-Xfinity driver Christopher Bell surprised people in the Lakes Region 200, a race where Brad Keselowski was expected to dominate - indeed, that Bell bested Keselowski led to "David Beats Goliath" on the telecast.   It was Bell's first Loudon win and the ninth in the last ten New Hampshire Xfinity races (Brad Keselowski spoiled the streak in 2012).   Bell's win comes after his Kentucky win the previous week and his popularity going forward is only burgeoning.

While Eldora gets the hype, the Modifieds deliver the best racing of the week -

Ryan Newman has run the NASCAR Modified race at New Hampshire as part of now twenty-six Mod Tour races, all at either Loudon or Bristol.   Here he drove a Curb Motorsports car and got into a race-long battle with Chase Dowling and Justin Bonsignore; Doug Coby led ten laps but was eliminated in a pit shunt with Newman and Jon McKennedy, Woody Pitkat, and Joe Degracia led briefly before Bonsignore, Newman, and Dowling took over; in all the lead officially changed hands twenty times among seven drivers.   Eric Goodale quietly crept into the fray, but it was Bobby Santos who stole the show - literally, clawing into the fray in the final 21 laps and then striking in the final six laps.   The fight for the lead turned into a multicar epic and Santos won by a rollbar with the leaders four abreast.

The Modifieds have always delivered high-quality competition at New Hampshire and showed anew how superspeedway draft-pack racing with overgripped racecars opens up passing where having more power does not, this coming after the much-hyped Eldora Dirt Debry and the exciting finish it saw.   One dislikes pitting tracks against each other and it is in no way any damnation of Eldora or other short tracks, but no short track has lived up to the sheer ferocity of superspeedway draft-pack slicing and dicing as the Modifieds deliver at New Hampshire.

The surprise remains the event does not get live media broadcasting - contrast with the days of the old Nashville Network that aired the race live; one is also struck radio coverage is not offered.

Apart from Newman, the star of the Mod Tour race was Mod veteran Ryan Preece, eliminated from contention by an early suspension failure.  

It all added up to another memorable weekend for the sport.