After the Busch brothers finished first and second at Atlanta Motor Speedway a week earlier, Kyle Busch will follow his runner-up finish to older brother Kurt Busch with the pole for Sunday’s Foxwoods Resort Casino 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
“New Hampshire has been a pretty decent place for us over the years, so we are looking forward to taking our green lightning Interstate Batteries Camry back there and go for another win,” Busch said. “The last few years, it’s been really hard to pass there. Last year, I think I ran three laps and, boom, went home. I had a tire failure. It’s been two years since I’ve run a full race there. Typically, we do run well there. We’ve got a strong package for there. It’s a 750-horsepower package race. It’s a mile race. It’s kind of what Phoenix is, so we need to kind of get a good baseline for what we need at the end of the year.”
While NASCAR’s formula for setting race starting grids that uses the owner points standings and previous race results and fastest lap puts Atlanta race winner Kurt Busch in row two in the fourth starting spot, it puts Martin Truex Jr. in second to join Kyle Busch up front for an all-Joe Gibbs Racing front row.
“I’ve been going there a long time,” Truex said. “It’s the first big track I ever raced on – the first Cup Series track I ever raced on. I have a lot of memories there. I really enjoy the area, obviously, and that place was really a big part of me getting the opportunity to move down south and race in the Busch Series back in the day. I haven’t been able to win there, yet, but we’ve been close a bunch of times, and hopefully, we can get it done this weekend.”
Reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Chase Elliott will start third to share row two of the starting grid with Kurt Busch.
“New Hampshire has been a really hit-or-miss place for us; it’s just a different track,” Elliott said. “It takes a different driving style, I feel like, than some of the other places. I look at Loudon at being more of its own animal. We’ve had a couple solid runs there, but never a dominating performance. It hasn’t been my best place, I don’t feel like, personally.”
Alex Bowman and a third JGR driver, Denny Hamlin, the series points leader, will start Sunday’s race in row three in the fifth and sixth positions. All four Gibbs drivers will be within the top-10 for the start of the race. The fourth team driver, Christopher Bell, will line up ninth on the grid.
Ford has been the winning manufacturer, of late, at NHMS, winning the three most recent races there, heading into the 2021 Foxwoods 301, but the highest starting Ford driver Sunday will Ryan Blaney in seventh. Blaney was the only Ford driver in the top-10 for the green flag Sunday.
Other top-10 starters include Tyler Reddick in eighth and series wins leader Kyle Larson in 10th.
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