New Hampshire Driver Notes & Quotes: Lenox Industrial Tools 301

MARTIN TRUEX JR ON WHY NEW HAMPSHIRE FITS HIS DRIVING STYLE: "I kind of cut my teeth there. It was my first big track I ever raced on. I raced in the Busch North (now K&N Pro Series East) Series and won some races in that division when I was driving for my dad’s team. I’ve even raced a modified there. My first big NASCAR win came at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in the Nationwide Series and it led to a championship. It’s an important place in terms of my career. It’s a place I have raced a lot. I have always enjoyed it. When you like a place, usually you do better at it."

TRUEX JR ON LAST WEEKS INCIDENT AT SONOMA: "It’s very frustrating that we put so much effort in what we do and it takes one guy’s mistake to screw it up for you. It is really going to hurt our chances to make The Chase. The 42nd-place finish is going to kill us. The NAPA team continues to do a great job. Our cars are running fast. It was by far the best car I have ever driven at Infineon Raceway. We had a great run going. I really thought it was going to be a good day for us. It just stinks when someone screws it up for you. I wish in our situation that things were different. I wish that we were in a position where what happened to us on Sunday wouldn’t cost us a chance to make the Chase. All we can do is go back to work and keep working hard. Hopefully this kind of stuff doesn’t happen again. We’ve had a couple of bad weeks. We didn’t run as well as we should have at Charlotte. We got in the late-race wreck at Pocono. At Michigan we didn’t run as well as we should have. This past weekend we were really good and were wrecked. It just seems like when we run well, we still do not get the finishes. That’s what we are missing right now. We still need to work on that."

DALE EARNHARDT JR. ON NEW HAMPSHIRE: "New Hampshire is one of the smaller tracks we go to, and I like racing on the shorter, flatter tracks. There's multiple grooves you can run there. You can go low and high and move around trying to find different things to make the car better. The trick is getting the car to roll through the center of the turns. We had a real good setup there last year so I'm looking forward to going back there."

LANCE McGREW, EARNHARDT JR'S CREW CHIEF ON NEW HAMPSHIRE: "You have to have a good-handling car to be successful at New Hampshire. It's a flat racetrack so it's difficult to get the car where it rotates in the center like you want and you still have enough forward bite to get off the corners and be happy. It's very difficult to pass there so track position again is at a premium as usual."

EARNHARDT JR. CHASSIS CHOICE: This weekend, crew chief Lance McGrew and the No. 88 crew will unload Hendrick Motorsports Chassis No. 88-589. This is a brand-new chassis that has not been raced or tested.

JEFF BURTON CHASSIS CHOICE: Burton will pilot Chassis No. 280 from the Richard Childress Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stable. Built new for 2009, this RCR Chevrolet was put through its first paces at Chicagoland Speedway last July where the 17-year veteran was credited with a 37th-place finish after being collected in a late-race multi-car incident. Burton then piloted this No. 31 racer at Kansas Speedway where he finished 23rd before posting a runner-up finish at Phoenix International Raceway in November. In 2010, this RCR-prepared Chevrolet returned to PIR in April where the Todd Berrier-led team finished 25th after a penalty for pitting outside the pit box halted their forward progress before rebounding nicely at Richmond International Raceway in May by posting a fourth-place finish.

BURTON ON EPOOR RUNS LAST SEASON DESPITE LOTS OF PAST SUCCESS AND THOUGHTS ON THIS WEEK: "Well, anytime you have those types of finishes, it's very disappointing. But, I can tell you that I am very optimistic about going to New Hampshire this year based on how well we ran at Phoenix and Richmond. I haven't won there in a long time and it would mean a great deal to me to win the LENOX Industrial Tools 301. LENOX has been a great partner of ours for a long time so for me, personally, I would like to get back to Victory Lane at Loudon."

KEVIN HARVICK CHASSIS CHOICE: Harvick will pilot Chassis No. 304 from the Richard Childress Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stable. This Chevrolet is brand new for 2010, and was used by the No. 29 team at Phoenix where Harvick finished 13th, and at Richmond where Harvick finished third.

HARVICK'S THOUGHTS ON NEW HAMPSHIRE THIS WEEK: "We ran well there last year, but there was a big wreck on a restart with us running seventh. That was the story of the year last year. I enjoy the flat tracks, but the worst we ran this year was at Phoenix, so I hope that's not an indication of what Loudon will be like for us. I think we should go up there and run really well based on how we have run all year. We are going to have weeks where we are a little off, and those are the days when you have to make something happen and get a top-10 finish, and we have been able to do that this year.

CLINT BOWYER CHASSIS CHOICE: Bowyer will pilot Chassis No. 303 from the Richard Childress Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stable. Built new in 2010, Bowyer drove this Chevrolet Impala to a seventh-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in May.

BOWYER ON HIS 2007 WIN BEING ONE OF HIS CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: "Definitely, but it seems like we haven't had a good run since then. We need to make sure we get out of there this time with a solid finish. Last year we were in the money and just got taken out of it at the end."

MARK MARTIN ON HIS WIN LAST YEAR AT NEW HAMPSHIRE: "Starting the Chase off like that, that was just incredible. I'd never won at New Hampshire before. Alan (Gustafson, crew chief) gave me an amazing race car, and then he made a great pit call to get us to the front. Once we were up there, it wasn't easy. We had those restarts at the end with Juan (Pablo Montoya) breathing down my neck. We held them all off, and on tires that were quite a bit older than theirs, so it was just a huge accomplishment."

MARTIN CHASSIS CHOICE: Gustafson has chosen Hendrick Motorsports Chassis No. 5-588 for Sunday's race. This is the same chassis that Martin drove to a fourth-place finish at Phoenix International Raceway on April 10 earlier this year.

MATT KENSETH ON RACING AT NEW HAMPSHIRE: "New Hampshire is a track that has always been a challenge for me and I feel like it hasn’t been one of my better tracks on the circuit, but statistically speaking, we seem to be pretty consistent here. We have good finishes at Loudon, but I feel like we haven’t really had a chance to chase down a win there. New Hampshire is a track where it’s fairly difficult to pass, so you’ll see teams use pit stops and pit strategy to advance their way through the field on Sunday. Racing at Loudon is unique, and it’s definitely a track that makes us work hard to get a solid finish."

KENSETH CREW CHIEF TODD PARROTT ON NEW HAMPSHIRE AND CHASSIS CHOICE: "We are bringing the same car we ran at Phoenix and Richmond earlier this season because those are two tracks that we compare notes to when we’re preparing for New Hampshire. At Phoenix we had a top-10 finish, while at Richmond we finished 13th, which I still consider that a great run for this car. We didn’t get the finish we wanted last weekend at Sonoma, but I think that we can have a solid weekend at Loudon for our Crown Royal Black team based on our performance so far this season at similar tracks."

CARL EDWARDS ON NEW HAMPSHIRE: "We are headed to New Hampshire, home of Fenway Sports Group, this weekend. There is a lot of pride on the line for all of us Roush Fenway drivers when we head that way. We’ve run really well at New Hampshire, we just haven’t been able to run well there lately. This is an important race for us for a number of reasons, but mostly because this is the first race of the Chase the next time we come back so it would be great to run well and take those notes back for the second race up there."

EDWARDS CHASSIS CHOICE: The No. 99 Aflac team will be bringing RK-647 this weekend to New Hampshire. Edwards raced this Ford Fusion at Phoenix in April where he started ninth and finished seventh.