Larry Mac: Why Kevin Harvick is the odds-on favorite to rule at Loudon
How you qualify this weekend is going to play a critical role at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. It's a hard track to pass on, so track position and pit selection are going to play key roles Sunday. It's a fairly short race of only 301 laps that equates to 312 miles.
Realistically, these guys will be able to make this race on three pit stops. I'll just go ahead and tell you right now that I think we'll see strategy that will make your head spin. I think we'll see strategy the entire time, but watch for it to particularly ramp up the last half of the race.
For those teams that don't get a good qualifying run in and don't have a very good pit selection, sort of like a road-course event, your pit strategy changes before the race. Like I mentioned, it's very hard to pass there, so it's going to be very hard for anyone to drive from the back to the front.
So those folks are going to have to get creative to make something happen because track position from the drop of the green flag is important. New Hampshire Motor Speedway really is unique. We call it a speedway, but in reality it's a short track with long straightaways. The other irony is it has less banking than any other of our short tracks on the circuit.
The only other place comparable we've been to with the 2015 rules package they will be running at New Hampshire was Phoenix earlier this year. Who to watch for? Well, based on Phoenix, you'd easily have to say Kevin Harvick is the favorite Sunday, because at Phoenix, not only did he sit on the pole, he led more than 200 laps and won the race.
With that said, New Hampshire is always hard to predict. Think about this: The past 11 races we've had there, well, we've had 11 different winners. To take that even a step further, the past 14 races there have given us 13 different winners.
The Penske cars swept the races there last year, so I'll be keeping an eye on them this weekend. If you told me today I have to make my pick, though, based on what he did at Phoenix, I'd be hard-pressed not to pick Kevin Harvick as the favorite on Sunday.
