Friday’s would really be boring if we had one driver dominate qualifying, glad nothing like that is happening this year. #12-Ryan Newman and company have got this deal down to a science. Newman grabbed his 7th Bud Pole of the season today at New Hampshire International Speedway. He’ll lead ’em to the green for Sunday’s Sylvania 300 for the 14th time in his short career (only 71 races). No other driver has more than four poles this year. #5-Terry Labonte will start outside the front row on Sunday. That’s his best starting spot since he had the pole at Richmond in May. #42-Jamie McMurray (3rd) has his best starting spot since he had the outside pole at Rockingham in November of 2002. #49-Ken Schrader (20th) has his best starting spot since he started 7th at Daytona in July. STREAKIN….Ryan Newman has 5 Top-10 starts in a row. We had a pretty good car-count of 47 this weekend….four on the Trouble Train out of town already. Derrike Cope (that’s a shame cause it was easily the best paint job we’ve seen in quite awhile), Larry Foyt, Morgan Shepherd, and Carl Long get the early out. Provisionals were taken by: Bobby Labonte, Kenny Wallace, Steve Park, Kyle Petty, Jason Leffler, Tony Raines, and Christian Fittipaldi. It’s been near impossible to figure out what’s charged and what’s a freebie since NASCAR changed the rules in midstream, but Jayski’s got as good a handle on it as anybody…..my database looks like chicken scratch. Best I can figure, the #4, #43, and #49 should now be OOP…but nothing etched in stone here. Always be safe and check your stats against Jay….in this case the url is: http://www.jayski.thatsracin.com/stats/2003/2003usedprov.htm .[the best I have it figured the OOP is correct, the provisionals were charged this week since there were 47 cars and only 2 were not eligible for provisional spots, if it 43 or less who are not eligible, then they do not count, which has happened 4 times this year] This place has got a tough act to follow. We’ve had a couple good races and a couple good brawls the last month, and that’s the stuff our sport was built on!( StockCarFans.Com Wcup Newsletter )(9-12-2003)
