The top five drivers in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series this week; Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, and Jeff Gordon all describe the 1.058-mile track at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. 

The LENOX Industrial Tools 301 in New England is this Sunday at 1:00 p.m. on TNT.

This fast series includes comments by three of NASCAR’s most popular drivers—Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne.

FYI WIRZ is the swift presentation of pertinent motor-sports topics compiled and condensed by Dwight Drum @ Racetake.com

‘The Race to the Chase’ — 10 races to the 10 race Chase begins with the NMS green flag.

Kevin Harvick (No. 29 Chevrolet)

"I enjoy the flat tracks, but the worst we ran this year was at Phoenix,” Harvick said. “So I hope that’s not an indication of what Loudon will be like for us. 

"It's difficult because the first few laps of a run are so hard to get a hold of the racetrack in traffic, and your car winds up pushing and sliding and doing all sorts of goofy things on restarts. The unique part of what happens at New Hampshire is if you don't pit for tires, you wind up getting these clumps of rubber on your tires, and the cars just slide around all over the place. You slide around and if you are in the middle of the pack, you wind up getting so far behind that by the time you catch back up, it's time to pit again. Track position is critical at New Hampshire."

Jimmie Johnson (No. 48 Chevrolet)

"Definitely excited for New Hampshire,” Johnson said. “It's been a good track for us and hopefully we can get back to victory lane. If not, then I'm expecting a good top-five run up there. Hopefully we can learn a lot there this weekend that will prepare us for the Chase.

“I was very excited about having the lead when we did earlier in the year and hated to see it slip away. It's kind of a funny thing though, if you're not leading and you're still in a comfortable spot in the Chase, I guess you start telling yourself, 'I don't want to lead right now.' At the end of the day, we all want to lead as often as possible and as much as possible. I think it's good for the team to experience that pressure and to have that mindset on the outside chance that it sends a message to the garage area that you could potentially be in the other competitor's heads, I think it's an advantage.”

Kyle Busch (No. 18 Toyota)

"Loudon is a pretty particular racetrack," Busch said. "It’s tough. It’s not like Phoenix. It’s not like Dover at all. It’s a flat racetrack and it’s really typical of a tough racetrack to pass on. You can’t just have a really good racecar and finish up front. You have to keep track position. You have to keep up all day and make everything work.

“In order to do well there, you need a car that works on all the different kinds of asphalt the tracks seem to be putting down. You need a car that has a lot of side bite in the rear and front grip to turn easier. At New Hampshire, it seems like I’ve always been loose into the corner and tight in the center, which is hard to fix, sometimes. I think the team that can fix that the best will have the best car.”

Denny Hamlin (No. 11 Toyota)

“We’re running much different setups than what we did at the beginning of the year or even at the end of last year,” Hamlin said. “Our engines, I’d say, are about the same, maybe a little bit better than what they were at the beginning of the season. Our cars are obviously the best in the corners right now which makes it look good down the straightaway.

“For us at the beginning of the year, a lot of it was we were struggling with our balance. Once we got our cars handling a little better, I started to not complain about the engines as much and the next thing you know we have race-winning cars week in and week out.”

Jeff Gordon (No. 24 Chevrolet)

“It’s been so long, it feels like I’ve never won at New Hampshire,” Gordon joked. “We’ve been good, and it’s still one of my favorite tracks. It’s a difficult, challenging race track, but we just haven’t been able to always put all the pieces in place. We’ve been really fast here recently but we haven’t been good on restarts. We’re trying to look into the setups to figure out what we can do to take off a little bit better.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (No. 88 Chevrolet)

"New Hampshire is one of the smaller tracks we go to, and I like racing on the shorter, flatter tracks,” Earnhardt said. “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."

Tony Stewart (No. 14 Chevrolet)

“It’s a big motor deal,” Stewart said. “With the corners being so tight, you’ve got to put a lot of gear in the car to get it up off the corner. Forward bite is always an issue there too, so it’s hard to get up off the corners. Then you’ve got long straightaways where you can kind of relax a little bit. Coming into the corners, you use a lot of brake, and it’s hard to not only get the car stopped, but to get it to turn. Then you go through that challenge all over again.”

Kasey Kahne (No.9 Ford)

"We really haven’t had too many cars capable of winning at Loudon, but we’ve usually been good enough to run in the top 10 or top 15,” Kahne said. “It’s a track that has very long corners so it’s going to be important that we get our Budweiser Ford to roll really well through the center of the corners. The straightaways are long for just a one-mile track and the turns are extremely flat, so having good brakes that will last you to the end is important if you want to run well.”

"All we want is to win races and make the Chase. It’s all you think about when it comes to NASCAR as a driver, so that’s still what we’re shooting for. We need to throw down some big races for awhile if we want to make it.”

Photo credit: Dwight Drum @ Racetake.com