LOUDON – Kyle Larson hasn’t enjoyed much luck at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. That seemed to turn around Friday when he recorded the fastest lap time in qualifying.
But what would have been Larson’s fourth pole win of the season was quickly taken away when his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Chevrolet failed post-qualifying inspection for an illegal rear decklid fin.
Martin Truex Jr., the runner-up in qualifying, was credited with the pole win, his first of the season.
“Not the way we wanted to get our first pole of the year, but looking forward to starting up front and getting a good pit stall,” Truex said.
Larson and Truex led the field throughout the day from practice laps to qualifying. The pair have battled all season as the two most dominant drivers in NASCAR.
Earlier this week, Truex was the beneficiary of a penalty charged to Larson’s team after the 42 failed post-race inspection in Kentucky. The penalty knocked Larson down to second in the Monster Energy Cup standings, one point behind Truex.
The penalty Friday sends Larson, the winner of two races this year, to the back of the field to begin Sunday’s race on a track where passing opportunities are difficult to find.
Larson has been challenged on the one-mile oval in Loudon. He has placed in the top-15 once in his last four races here.
Truex, already with three wins this season, is chasing his first Cup win at Loudon where he previously has won in the Xfinity Series and the K&N pro series.
Truex will share the front row with Jimmie Johnson. Matt Kenseth and Jamie McMurray will start behind them, followed by Kasey Kahne and Erik Jones in the third row, and Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin in the fourth row. Kurt Busch and Brad Keselowski round out the top 10.
Hamlin’s team had to pull a backup car out of the hauler after the driver crushed the front end of his No. 11 FedEx Toyota on a practice lap Friday.
The timing for Aric Almirola’s return couldn’t be better.
After missing the last eight weeks recovering from a fiery crash at Kansas that left him with a broken back, Almirola will be back in the No. 43 Ford for Richard Petty Motorsports this weekend.
A short 301-lap race on the one-mile track at Loudon on Sunday will help Almirola ease back into the car, he said on Friday.
“Of all the tracks you look at on the schedule, this is certainly the one that has the least amount of loading as far as banking and speed is concerned,” he said. “It is a great race track for me to come back and knock the cobwebs off and not really put my spine through a lot of loading for a long period of time.”
Almirola turned laps in Charlotte on Tuesday to see how his body responded to being in the car.
“We were there for four hours,” he said. “I felt great inside the car. I don’t really foresee any issues. I might have some soreness after the race, but I think that is to be expected.”
All-star races can sometimes be a snooze. There are no points on the line and drivers can be wary of taking risks where there is not much at stake.
Ryan Preece would probably disagree.
The Berlin, Conn., native put it all on the line with a last-lap pass of Cup driver Ryan Newman to take the lead and win the Whelen Modified All-Star Shootout on Friday.
The pass drew gasps in the media center as Preece squeezed into the inside line beside Newman entering Turn 1. Their wheels connected for a moment but not enough to cause a wreck as Preece recovered and pulled ahead of Newman through the turn and into the back stretch.
“I think I was more worried about (Newman) coming over to Victory Lane after (because) I didn’t know what kind of mood he would be in,” said Preece, who is also competing in the Xfinity Series this weekend.
Newman held on to finish second and had no ill will toward Preece.
“I don’t think he hit me on purpose by any means, but he had position,” Newman said. “I stuck it down there on the outside of him, trying to hold him down and he bounced me up into the marbles. I wish we could have raced to the checkered, but it was a heck of a race.”
You may notice a dark stripe running along the high line in the corners at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this weekend.
The traction compound referred to by drivers as PJ1 (or VHT or a slew of other names) was applied to the Magic Mile with the goal of encouraging drivers to use multiple lanes and create a more exciting show for fans.
Drivers often stick to one groove on the short, flat track in Loudon and this substance is simply there to provide a better grip.
“We always run that one lane here, which I call the middle lane,” Kyle Busch said in his press conference Friday morning. “They were just trying to widen the race track a little bit and give a little bit more opportunity for us to be able to run side-by-side and not just feel like we’re crashing here all the time or running into each other on restarts.”
Many drivers took issue when NASCAR decided to use the Tire Dragon to add rubber at Kentucky Speedway last week without letting the drivers council in on the plan. This time, the drivers council was included in discussion of how the traction substance should be used in Loudon.
“It was discussed with the driver council and I like it when they do that instead of just spurring it on all of us when we get to the tracks,” Busch said. That way “if it doesn’t work, then that’s just their bad idea. At least if the council’s involved, then it’s all of our bad idea.”
(Nick Stoico can be reached at 369-3339, nstoico@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @NickStoico.)