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"It's a different ball game up here (in Winston Cup), but he's a quick learner and we're looking for him to do good."
McClure has filed two entries for next weekend's Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway, where he had hoped to run Busch driver David Reutimann in his second Winston Cup race.
However, due to Bud Pole Qualifying being rained out at New Hampshire, Reutimann did not make the field at Loudon.
"I think we might enter David in the ARCA race at Pocono," McClure said. "I don't think it would be fair to put him in a Cup car there, when he's never seen the place and would be making his first Winston Cup start.
"We may ask Brett Bodine to qualify our Winston Cup car and race it."
After that, McClure expects to run Reutimann in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the Zephyrhills, Fla., driver was impressive in a test session last week.
"At Indy we're going to run two cars, David and somebody else," McClure said. "Right now we hope it will be Robert Pressley."
Then, McClure said he would again use Tennessean Johnny Miller, who was the SCCA Trans-Am championship leader when he ran for MMM at Infineon Raceway and Watkins Glen International.
Miller scored the team's first lead lap finish of the season four races ago, at the Infineon road course.
"All these people we've worked with have been real good and nice to work with," McClure said. "It feels pretty good to see some light at the end of the tunnel."
For the second time in three NASCAR Winston Cup races, a body part sailed over the fence Sunday at New Hampshire International Speedway.
 | VIDEO CLIPS |  | Andretti spins just after the green flag
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| | |  | Mike Wallace hits hard on the backstretch
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| | | | |  | Hear from the top five finishers at Loudon
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Two races after the hood of Robby Gordon's car flew over the frontstretch fence at Daytona, Jamie McMurray spun and crashed his No. 42 Havoline Dodge into the Turn 1 wall on Lap 197. The impact knocked the "TV panel" off his car.
The lightweight fiberglass piece -- which weighs between two and five lbs and sits beneath the rear spoiler and above the bumper -- flipped into the air, cleared the debris fence and landed on the spectator walkway in front of the grandstands, which track officials noted were filled to a capacity crowd of 101,000.
While Gordon's hood struck a female spectator after a bolt securing the hood's tether failed, causing her to be hospitalized overnight, McMurray's bodywork, after clearing the fence that ends 18 feet above the top of the frontstretch wall, narrowly missed an unidentified male spectator before it landed on the ground.
Earlier in the race, the cars of Rusty Wallace and Tony Stewart made nose-to-tail contact on the 1.058-mile oval's frontstretch, with Stewart surgically stripping the TV panel off Wallace's car. The piece sailed into the air and was high enough to clear the fence, but it dropped back onto the track.
The un-tethered panel is attached to the back of the car with pop rivets and body putty. McMurray's piece was returned to NASCAR after the race. A NASCAR spokesman said the sanctioning body would investigate the panels' detachment.
Near the end of the New England 300, a Goodyear tire spokesperson said the manufacturer's engineers had reported a "perfect performance from the tires," with not one incident originating from a tire failure. She reported that the lap times seen in Sunday's race were the fastest for stock cars in the history of the 14-year-old track.
The tires were the same compound as that used for both Winston Cup events here in 2002. All four turns of the racetrack were repaved with an asphalt compound referred to as a "Trinidad mix" earlier this spring, which contributed to improved grip.
NHIS track owner Bob Bahre was only too happy to entertain questions from a mass of media members after the New England 300. But unlike the last two years, he was able to praise his track's surface rather than defend it.
"We're pleased with it, but to be honest, I thought it would be OK from what I saw in the first test session," said Bahre. "You've got to remember that that Trinidad mix is so hard, it's not going to come up."
Last year, the track was repaved in June and hot weather did not enable it to properly cure. In the summer race, pebbles pulled out of the surface, making any trip out of the groove treacherous.
Bobby Labonte, whose only New Hampshire bragging point is the Bud Pole Award for the July 2000 event, was a visitor to the "Big Red Trailer," the mobile Winston Cup office after Sunday's event.
While all visitors are welcome there, Labonte's presence wasn't requested. He went to vent to Winston Cup director John Darby over what he felt was the poor quality of racing at the track.
Labonte ended up 14th and never led, and reportedly felt the equality of the field and the aerodynamic tendencies of the cars made passing all but impossible.
He declined to comment either before or after his visit.
The NASCAR control tower called one of its pit road inspectors early in the New England 300 to inquire why Morgan Shepherd, who was in his first start of the season, was making repeated pit stops.
The call back on the radio revealed the North Carolina veteran -- who has raced this season in Winston Cup, Busch and the Craftsman Truck Series, was scuffing tires for another team.
Shepherd ended up 43rd due to a brake problem that sent him to the garage after the 43rd lap, the second straight year that issue has put him out at NHIS.
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