NHIS surface makes trouble for some

Unofficial Results | Unofficial Standings

LOUDON, N.H. -- New Hampshire International Speedway owner Bob Bahre Sunday resolutely defended his race track's surface -- which he went to great expense to refurbish before Sunday's New England 300.

But although a number of drivers commended him for the effort, they lined up virtually en masse to voice their discontent.

A walk through Turns 3 and 4 of the 1.058-mile track after the event revealed a significant amount of rubber buildup, but also a two-foot-wide swath of pavement in which it appeared the wide and sticky Goodyear tires had ripped pieces out of the surface from eight to 10 feet off the yellow line marking the track's bottom.

VIDEO CLIPS Tony Stewart hits the wall on lap 123. Play video

It was possible to tear pebble-size pieces of the track surface up with a fingernail.

"I thought it was a hell of a good race," Bahre said. "The fans were excited and if you don't have fans you don't have anything. You've got to keep them happy. I thought it was a pretty good show, personally."

The race did have 22 lead changes, the second most in the 15-race Winston Cup history of the track. After the last three races had no more than 10 lead changes, including the September 2000 race in which Jeff Burton led every lap, Bahre did major repaving jobs twice in the last three months.

The last came after the Busch 200 NASCAR Busch Series race in May.

Bahre said Sunday he did not go out on the race track after the event to view it. NASCAR spokesperson Danielle Frye said NASCAR officials, having dealt with similar situations at newly paved facilities, planned to meet with Bahre and officials of the asphalt company that did the paving work; as well as speaking to drivers to consider any steps taken before the series returns in September.

"I know the track is fine," Bahre said. "If there's anything on it, it's rubber and I'm not faulting Goodyear. I'm going to go out later. If the rubber did come off well that's just something that happened -- it's probably happened to other places, too."

The drivers said it was more than that. Matt Kenseth had the most to lose, since he appeared to be driving away to his fourth victory of the season in the No. 17 DeWal Ford before a flat tire handed the lead to winner Ward Burton with 10 laps remaining.

Kenseth had to pit to replace the tire and finished 33rd.

"It was pretty treacherous out there and the track was coming apart like crazy," Kenseth said. "There was gravel all over. If you hit the wrong piece of gravel it would go through the tire. These tires are real thin and with all that trash out there, there was bound to be flat tires and we were just one of the unlucky ones to get one."

Kenseth said he wasn't sure of either the cause, or a solution.

"I'm not a track owner so it's hard for me to say," he said, "but with these cars and these tires, you ought to know better than to pave the track in June because you know it's gonna come apart in July when it's 90 degrees out. I knew it was gonna come apart -- I just tried to stay out of the stuff."

Ward Burton said he simply had to tread lightly after every restart following each of the 14 caution periods.

"It took me three to five laps to get any grip at all," he said. "The track has always been like that. I couldn't tell if the track surface was coming up I knew you'd lose the nose over there in the middle of (Turns) 3 and 4 (but) I didn't know if the track surface was coming up or not.

"A lot of times we'll get rubber buildup and that will be like the same thing. I tried to stay on the inside groove on both ends as much as possible."

"The track was absolutely junk -- the worst race track I've ever raced on -- no matter if I live up in New England or not, I hate it," Connecticut native Jerry Nadeau said. "I love the Bahre family -- they are great people. But, it's not a place to race on.

"There were marbles. They had to sweep it every 20 laps and then the first three laps...everybody was absolutely all over the place. You couldn't get any grip. It just wasn't a good race track to race on."

Competitors who participated in three of four divisions activities Saturday feared Sunday afternoon the surface of the facility would cause a problem, and less than halfway into the New England 300 it did.

Seven cautions flew in the first 123 laps -- all for accidents -- but the last two were directly caused by the track surface, the participants said.

At lap 106, the sixth caution came out when Kyle Petty's No. 45 Sprint Dodge speared into the outside wall in Turn 4. Petty spent 59 laps in the garage while his crew repaired the car and he ultimately finished 37th, 60 laps down.

At lap 123, Tony Stewart -- who was running fourth at the time -- got out of the lower racing groove between Turns 3 and 4 and spiked the wall with his No. 20 Home Depot Pontiac's right front corner. A wrecker also took it to the garage, where his crew chief -- a New England native -- pulled no punches.

"It's just so frustrating," Greg Zipadelli said. "To come here to a place you love and that you run so good at -- I don't know. The place has got no grip; you can't race on it (and) the asphalt is coming up all over the place.

"We just got up a little bit out of the groove -- but there is no groove, that's the frustrating part. He got in the junk and wrecked a perfectly good race car that was running in the top-five all day and that's frustrating. Nobody loves this place any more than I do but there's nobody that probably hates coming here as much as I do, right now.

"It's not racing -- you can't pass, you can't do anything -- and now the race track is coming up. I don't know what the answer is. I just know that it's frustrating and you're taking a chance on hurting the driver like that."

Zipadelli said that contact several laps before when Kurt Busch hit Stewart's left rear probably had nothing to do with his crash.

"All I know is what the spotter said -- he (Stewart) just got in there and the car just took off," Zipadelli said. "It was kind of the same thing that happened to the 45 car. There's no grip out there, so you're just riding around in the night."

Following Stewart's caution, NASCAR deployed its jet blowers to clean the track surface after defending Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon made the request over his in-car radio.

Craftsman Truck Series driver Robert Pressley said the track surface if it was the same as it was for his 200-lap race would cause problems Sunday.

"The Winston Cup cars are going to tear up some race track tomorrow," Pressley said Saturday. "It ain't coming up, but the sealer is coming up. You get in it and you'll go for a ride."

Pressley was incorrect in citing an asphalt sealer as the problem. The racetrack was reconfigured in April with a lane of new asphalt laid in Turns 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

Following the NASCAR Busch Series race here in May, problems with the surface in Turns 3 and 4 caused officials to regrind the new pavement off the track and resurface it.

Saturday, temperatures reached the high 70s. Sunday, at virtually the same time, almost 4 p.m. ET, the temperature was 85 degrees.

"The Cup cars -- with 800 horsepower -- they get in there, they'll rip that sealer up in a hurry," Pressley said. "It could be a nice one."

"I've been coming here since 1990," Bobby Labonte said after finishing 13th. "These are great race fans. The people here are so nice -- they are so absolutely perfect (and) it's a great facility.

"But I remember in 1990 (in a Busch Series race) I turned over on the back straightaway because the race track came apart. It was tearing up in 1990 and it's still doing the same thing -- it's just the way the sport has evolved over 10 years.

"We've got a ton more downforce. Tires are incredibly grippy, which makes it hard to pass, which makes for everything else and what you have is what you have.

"They should give everybody their money back for impersonating a race. It was not a good race -- I don't think."