Posted on by Reid Spencer

RELATED: Race results | Stage 1 results | Stage 2 results | Detailed Breakdown

LOUDON, N.H. – In Christopher Bell’s dominating win in Saturday’s UNOH 175 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, the rich got richer.

The top seed in the series Playoffs, Bell won the first two stages of the opening postseason event and took the checkered flag 1.248 seconds ahead of runner-up Ryan Truex to notch his fifth victory of the season.

The win earned Bell automatic advancement into the second round of the playoffs, gave him an additional seven playoff points to bring his series-leading total to 47 and widened his advantage over the seven drivers chasing him for the title, given that no other playoff driver finished in the top five at the 1.058-mile track.

With all that said, the victory wasn’t a foregone conclusion for the driver of the No. 4 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota. Truex powered into the lead past Ben Rhodes after a restart on Lap 132, following a caution called when Kaz Grala knocked the Ford of Austin Cindric sideways in Turn 4 on Lap 126.

Bell patiently stalked Truex for 28 laps, as Truex positioned his no. 16 Toyota to block the line of the series leader. Finally, on Lap 160 of 175, Bell got a strong run off the second corner and buried his Tundra into Turn 3, shooting past Truex into the lead.

RELATED: See Bell make the decisive pass of Truex

“He was doing a really good job of watching his mirror,” Bell said of Truex’s effort. “I knew it was tough to pass all day, but our truck had been so good, we had been able to do it until we got to him.

“I kept trying to work down, and he kept blocking my air down and down and down. Finally, I got one run where I drove up in (Turns) 1 and 2 and then got a big run into 3.”

In fact, Truex was surprised he was able to keep Bell behind him for 28 laps.

“When you’ve got the best truck in the field behind you, it makes it tougher,” Truex said. “I did everything I could to hold him off. I was trying to take his lane and block and everything – I just didn’t have quite the grip he had.

“I didn’t know how this race would shake out. Every restart, I just gave it my all – a lot of three-wide stuff, probably (ticked) a few people off. But we’re trying to win races, and we’re getting closer.”

Bell, who won for the first time at New Hampshire and the seventh time in his career, leaves the Magic Mile with a whopping 40-point lead over second-place Johnny Sauter, the defending series champion. Sauter finished ninth on Saturday after polesitter Noah Gragson spun in Turn 4 on lap 64 and caved in the right side of Sauter’s No. 21 Chevrolet between the front and rear tires.

WATCH: Gragson, Sauter make contact

With the playoff field to be trimmed from eight drivers to six at Talladega two races from now, John Hunter Nemechek and Chase Briscoe fell below the cut line. A rear gear failure sidelined Nemechek for 36 laps, and he finished 20th to drop to eighth in the standings.

Briscoe fought handling problems throughout the afternoon and finished 11th, dropping to seventh in points, three behind Grala, who came home 10th.

Non-Playoff drivers Todd Gilliland, Grant Enfinger and Stewart Friesen ran third fourth and fifth, while playoff contenders Matt Crafton, Rhodes and Cindric finished sixth, seventh and eighth, respectively.

Notes: During post-race inspection, the No. 51 truck of Gilliland was found to have an improper air intake modification. Any potential penalties will be announced next week by NASCAR.

Posted on by Pat DeCola

RELATED: Full lineup | Kyle Busch on pole for New Hampshire

What: ISM Connect 300
Where: New Hampshire Motor Speedway, 1.058-mile oval in Loudon, New Hampshire
Green flag: 2:15 p.m. ET
TV/Radio: NBCSN, NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Forecast: Sunny, with a high near 89. Calm wind becoming west around 5 mph. (Weather.gov)
National anthem: Marine Corps Veteran, “The Singing Trooper,” Daniel. M. Clark
Grand Marshal: Marc Del Vecchio, Chief Technology Officer, ISM Connect
Race distance:  300 Laps, 317.4 Miles
Pit road speed: 45 mph
Caution car speed: 50 mph
Stage lengths: Stage 1 ends on Lap 75. Stage 2 ends on Lap 150. Final Stage is scheduled to end on Lap 301.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

LOUDON, N.H. – If Denny Hamlin wins Sunday’s ISM Connect 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (2 p.m. ET on NBCSN), he’ll have to face his fear.

Not on the race track, mind you. In Victory Lane.

As part of its post-race ceremony, the Magic Mile awards the winning driver a gigantic live lobster. When Hamlin won at New Hampshire in July, he recoiled when crew chief Mike Wheeler tried to hand him the 22-pound prize.

Understand that Hamlin hates lobsters. He can’t eat if someone is consuming a lobster at a nearby table. And though he finally posed for a few photos with the giant lobster after the summer race, it was not an experience the driver of the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota relished.

So even if Hamlin wins the second race in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs and punches his ticket to the next round, he’ll visit Victory Lane with a distinct sense of dread, even though the lobster’s claws are held firmly shut by large rubber bands.

RELATED: @nascarcasm imagines a lobster horror flick

“Yeah, I’ve never really liked them to begin with,” Hamlin said. “I don’t like the taste of them. I don’t — I just don’t like looking at them. They have pincers, really, so I don’t like anything that’s ugly and has pincers.

“I don’t know — it’s just a big scorpion in my mind. I try to stay away from them and, yeah, I’ve had some interesting moments with them for sure that I don’t care to recall or bring back up.”

Of course, those who might want to play a practical joke on Hamlin know how to devise a prank that’s guaranteed to be effective.

A lobster once appeared mysteriously in the toilet in Hamlin’s motor coach.

“I’ve had one in my toilet before, yes,” Hamlin said. “It was disturbing.”

Coincidentally, Monday happens to be National Lobster Day.

Hamlin won’t be celebrating.

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Final practice results

Martin Truex Jr. jumped to the top of the leaderboard for Saturday’s final Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, wheeling his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota around the 1.058-mile track at 131.647 mph.

Kevin Harvick was second-fastest in the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford at 131.633 mph.

Polesitter Kyle Busch was third in the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota at 131.515 mph.

Daniel Suarez in the No. 19 JGR Toyota, and Kyle Larson, who led the first two practice sessions, rounded out the top five.

Ty Dillon was forced to a backup car when his No. 13 Germain Racing Chevrolet clipped the outside wall and was damaged. He had qualified to start 30th Sunday in the ISM Connect 300 (2 p.m., NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

More than a dozen cars served practice holds for inspection violations, the most severe of which was the No. 22 Team Penske Ford of Joey Logano sitting for the entire 50-minute session after failing pre-qualifying inspection Friday.

Serving 30-minute holds were the No. 78 of Truex Jr. and the No. 1 of Jamie McMurray for failing pre-race inspection three times at Chicago, and the No. 19 of Suarez and No. 77 of Erik Jones for failing pre-race inspection at Chicago twice and pre-qualifying inspection at New Hampshire twice.

Fifteen-minute holds were issued to: No. 4 Harvick, No. 10 Danica Patrick, No. 13 Dillon, No. 23 Corey LaJoie, No. 24 Chase Elliott, No. 31 Ryan Newman, No. 32 Matt DiBenedetto, No. 38 David Ragan and No. 48 Jimmie Johnson.

RELATED: Early practice results

Kyle Larson led Saturday’s opening Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, turning a lap in the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet at 132.586 mph.

Larson also was fastest in Friday’s Monster Energy Series practice; he will start second in Sunday’s ISM Connect 300.

Ryan Blaney was second-fastest in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford, speeding around the 1.058-mile track at 132.517 mph.

Last week’s NASCAR Playoffs opener winner Martin Truex Jr. was third in the No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota at 132.503 mph.

A pair of Joe Gibbs Racing teammates, Matt Kenseth in the No. 20  Toyota and Denny Hamlin in the No. 11 Toyota, rounded out the top five.

Posted on by Reid Spencer

RELATED: Full qualifying results | See the starting lineup

LOUDON, N.H. – Kyle Busch went from the top of the chart to near disaster and back to the top again in winning the pole position for Sunday’s ISM Connect 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (2 p.m. ET on NBCSN), the second race in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoff.

After posting the fastest lap in the first round of knockout qualifying at the 1.058-mile track, Busch missed his mark entering Turn 1 in the second round and narrowly averted a session-ending crash into the outside wall.

But Busch recovered on his second lap in the round, cracked the top 12 and saved his best effort for last in the final round, navigating the Magic Mile in 20. 203 seconds (135.049 mph) to edge Kyle Larson (134.911 mph) for the top starting spot.

The Coors Light Pole Award was Busch’s third at New Hampshire, his eighth of the season and the 27th of his career. Busch also started first on the grid for last Sunday’s Playoff opener at Chicagoland Speedway.

“I didn’t think I hit it very well, actually,” Busch said of his lap in the money round. “I was going to go out and run my second lap and try for a little bit more, but I slipped off of (Turn) 2 really bad, so I just had to abort. It definitely wasn’t going to be any faster.”

Busch acknowledged he was fortunate to keep his car intact after the slip in Round 2 that resulted from trying to keep his left-side tires in contact with the PJ1 traction compound that had been applied to the track.

“I gave myself too much room on my left sides, trying to keep ‘em in the black on entry, and it was like half a car too wide to the right,” Busch said. “I was nervous.

“I thought I was 48 and 24-ing there for a second (a reference to crashes in first practice by Jimmie Johnson and Chase Elliott), but I was able to hang onto it, surprisingly, and battle through on the backstretch and ease her off into (Turn) 3 and build my lap back up heading to the start/finish line.”

RELATED: Johnson and Elliott crash in practice

Busch and Larson were two of 11 Playoff drivers who advanced to the final round of time trials. Denny Hamlin qualified third, Ryan Blaney fourth and series leader Martin Truex Jr, fifth. Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch were sixth and seventh.

Erik Jones in eighth was the only non-Playoff driver to crack the top 12.

Larson was .029 seconds off Busch’s pole-winning pace.

“I felt like maybe I got in the corner a little hot and got myself a little bit too loose and to the brakes too hard,” said Larson, who enters Sunday’s race second in the Playoff standings. “But I feel like overall my lap was pretty good. The No. 18 (Busch) has been really fast recently, and especially in qualifying all year.

“So for us to be second to him is not bad. We had the pole here earlier in the year and got encumbered (Larson’s time was disallowed because his rear decklid fin was outside specifications), but we had to back it up with a front row start. It feels good. We’ll have a nice pit stall selection. Hopefully we can have another smooth day.”

After a rough outing at Chicagoland and a subsequent crew chief change to veteran Darian Grubb, Kasey Kahne qualified ninth.

“Yeah, it was really nice,” Kahne said. “The car was balanced really well the entire day. We made gains every time out, and that final run I was just a tick tight and then gave up about a tenth that I thought I could run better.

“I gave up about a tenth, which I thought we could have been top five, and that would have been pretty cool, but, still, a really solid Friday.”

Posted on by Pat DeCola

RELATED: Complete playoff picture | Johnson goes to backup car after early contact

LOUDON, N.H. – At the three-quarter mark of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season, Jimmie Johnson is on pace for four wins – a boon for most teams, but a bit below the bar that’s been set compared to the six, seven, even 10-win campaigns that we’re accustomed to seeing from the No. 48 Chevrolet driver.

A record-tying seven championships deep, the 42-year-old Johnson is likely in the final stage of his career.

A stage, in fact, that has seen the introduction of something foreign to the Hendrick Motorsports driver and NASCAR as a whole … stages.

Johnson’s three 2017 wins to date all came within the first 13 races of the season, while the concept of stage racing was fairly novel and teams were still feeling things out. To that point, Johnson and crew chief Chad Knaus’ race strategy that led to the first seven titles remained largely unaltered: run hard, race fast and get to the finish line ahead of everyone else.

As the season wore on, other teams (see Nos. 18, 42, and particularly 78) began to adopt a strategy that included piling up stage wins and race wins — both of which the No. 48 team has been shut out of since an early June win at Dover.

In fact, Johnson and Co. have exactly – count ’em – one stage win in 2017, something the driver is starting to realize may be a determining factor throughout the remainder of the NASCAR Playoffs until Miami.

RELATED: 2017 stage point totals

“Those bonus points (for stage placement) are huge,” he said Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s ISM Connect 300 (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). “We had a white board with points earned on last weekend’s race (at Chicago) and you would think that an eighth-place finish would yield a fair amount of points, but we didn’t score any stage points. I can’t remember exactly now, but we didn’t leave the track with the eighth most points scored; it was much worse than that and that is a problem, especially as you get to the later rounds and need to count on points.

“I think we are all living it first-hand. I think we understood the concept, but now that it is in your face and you live it day-to-day and kind of obsess over it, I think it is making it much more apparent to myself and others how important those stage points are.”

Just take a look at where Martin Truex Jr., driver of the No. 78 Toyota, is in the playoffs standings compared to Johnson after the first race at Chicago. Truex won the race and Johnson finished eighth, but they’re separated by a whopping 56 points because of the 78 team’s emphasis on stage wins throughout 2017.

Johnson has proven time and again since his first title in 2006 that he can win in untenable circumstances, under evolving championship rules (points, 10-12- or 16-driver playoff fields, elimination-style, elimination style with stages, etc.).

RELATED: Jimmie in his own words: ‘I want to be the best’

But he’s now realizing the situation his team is in currently and the points cushion his team maybe could have or should have – and the uphill battle he’ll be fighting over the next nine weeks.

“Yeah, this year’s format definitely doesn’t fit my natural tendency in a car and kind of what our team has earned seven championships through. So, we felt like without a doubt this is going to challenge us more than any other format in our history in the sport,” Johnson said. ” … We always show up at the end of a race and if you don’t win the race there is a very good chance you are going to earn (fewer) points than you did if you were up front at the start and got stage points in the first and second stage. That is just the reality of it and it’s forcing me to do things differently. … ”

“But, winning does supersede all,” he continued. “So, if we can look at the new approach and at the same time not take anything away from the way we have won so many races and championships that will fix all.”

And if there was ever an old dog that could learn new tricks, it’s Johnson.

Posted on by Brad Norman

Mess with the bull, you get the horns.

A phrase that needs little explanation, especially when it’s coming from someone like Johnny Sauter, who isn’t afraid to do whatever it takes to win.

RELATED: Sauter’s intense post-race interview

After celebrating in Victory Lane at Chicago, Sauter, the 2016 series champion, addressed perhaps the key question of the NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series Playoffs — How do the veterans feel about the youth movement happening in the series?

Sauter’s response: He isn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with anyone, even drivers who are half his age.

The 2017 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Playoffs field is a melting pot of two veteran drivers, one being Sauter, and six fast-rising young guns who are trying to jumpstart their early careers.

MORE: Analyzing the full field

Ben Rhodes, driver of the No. 27 Safelite AutoGlass Toyota Tundra, addressed the topic with NASCAR.com after Sauter said “If Ben Rhodes wants a piece of it, let’s go” post-Chicago.

“I’ll make sure to bring my leather gloves,” Rhodes told ‪NASCAR.com. “I’ll wrestle the cattle up. I ain’t scared. He can be a bully all he wants, it doesn’t intimidate me.”

With a championship on the line, all eight drivers — no matter the age — want to win it all.

Will experience be a factor? Will the motivation to make a statement be the key?

The journey begins at New Hampshire on Saturday (1 p.m. ET, FS1, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Practice results

Using a top speed of 135.714 mph, Kyle Larson brought his No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet to the top of the leaderboard in Friday’s opening Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Kyle Busch was second-fastest, his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota notching a fast lap of 135.342 mph. Hendrick Motorsports’ Kasey Kahne clocked the third-quickest speed in his No. 5 Chevrolet (135.198 mph), while last week’s Chicago winner Martin Truex Jr. nabbed the fourth spot in his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota (135.188 mph) during the waning minutes of the session. Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five, his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford coming up at 135.030 mph.

Denny Hamlin, the most recent winner at the Magic Mile, ranked sixth in the field, his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota notching a speed of 134.973 mph.  Reigning race winner Kevin Harvick was 19th-fastest in his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.

The top 10 drivers in opening practice are all playoff contenders with the exception of Erik Jones (eighth-fastest).

Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jimmie Johnson and Chase Elliott both hit the outside wall early during opening practice. Both Johnson and Elliott will go to backup cars. Elliott did not make another lap in the backup car and was the slowest in opening practice among the 16 NASCAR Playoffs drivers (32nd).

RELATED: Johnson, Elliott smack the wall

Friday’s opening practice run was the only practice time for Monster Energy Series teams on the day. The NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series practices twice, with Monster Energy Series qualifying slated for 5:15 p.m. ET (NBCSN/NBC Sports App).