NASCAR Preview For New Hampshire

It’s a busy weekend in racing with Sprint Cup, Nationwide and the Truck Series  all in action. Sprint and Nationwide are at New Hampshire while the trucks are running in Iowa.

Kyle Busch won two out of three races last week at Kentucky, winning the Truck series event on
Thursday then the Sprint Cup race on Saturday. He enters this weekend with 99 NASCAR wins and with just one more victory he'll become only the third NASCAR driver with 100 or more wins to his credit. Richard Petty holds the all-time record with 200, followed by David Pearson with 106. Kyle has 22 victories in Sprint Cup, 48 Nationwide and 29 in trucks.  He'll have two shots to hit the century mark this weekend. He's driving in both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races and New Hampshire is a track where he's done well. He has one Sprint Cup victory back in 2006 and he's also won the last two Nationwide races there.

This weekend kicks off the second-half of the 36-race season. Eight races are left before the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship begin.

Drivers are starting to take a closer look at the point standings.  This year the top 10 drivers qualify for the
chase, then positions 11 & 12 go to the drivers with the most wins as long as they’re in the top 20.

Entering the weekend, even though he stands 15^th in the standings, David Ragan holds the first wild card spot because of his win earlier this month at Daytona.

Tony Stewart stands 11^th and he holds the final wild card spot.  But he has yet to win a race this season.

Clint Bowyer is set to make his 200th career start in the series. Two of his four career wins have come at New
Hampshire, including last September's race.
Jimmie Johnson is the defending race winner.  He took the lead from Kurt Busch with two laps left and held on for the win.

SOURCE: nascar.com