Jamie McMurray: New England 300 preview

LOUDON, N.H. -- The Havoline team will race chassis No. 301. Jamie McMurray has raced Chassis No. 301 on two different occasions in 2003 at Martinsville and Richmond.

McMurray is making his NASCAR Winston Cup Series debut at New Hampshire International Speedway this weekend. McMurray has two previous NASCAR Busch Series starts at New Hampshire International Speedway with a best finish of ninth (5/11/02).

McMurray enters the New England 300 22nd in NASCAR Winston Cup Series points and currently sits second in the Raybestos Rookie-of-the-Year standings.

McMurray heads into New Hampshire coming off a strong eighth-place finish last weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. It was McMurray's fourth top-10 finish of the 2003 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season. McMurray has scored two top-five, four top-10 and seven top-15 finishes in the first 18 races of the 2003 Winston Cup season.

McMurray will be pulling double duty this weekend at New Hampshire International Speedway as he will pilot the No. 1 Yellow Dodge in Saturday's NASCAR Busch Series race before climbing behind the wheel of the No. 42 Havoline Dodge for Sunday's New England 300.

"I've been to Loudon twice in the Busch car and have run fairly well. I've heard a lot of guys complain about it, but I've always liked the track. It's just real hard to pass there. It seems like pit strategy and fuel mileage always play out at Loudon. You just try to get up underneath a guy off the corner to gain a position."

"Loudon is probably more like Milwaukee than anywhere else. Sterling has run well at Loudon and our short track program has been pretty good. Even though Loudon is a mile around, it's still kind of like a short track, so I think we'll be pretty good."

"We're taking the same car we ran at Martinsville and Richmond earlier this year and we had top-five runs going in both of those races until we had engine problems."