This week’s contest at New Hampshire Motor Speedway is the first of two races that challenge drivers and crew chiefs with some of the flattest turns of any ovals the series runs.
New Hampshire’s 1.058-mile track’s variable turn banking ranges from 2 degrees to 7 degrees. Only Turn 3 at Pocono — next week’s destination — offers less banking. New Hampshire gives drivers almost no help getting the car to turn.
What New Hampshire does have, however, is 1,500-foot long straights that encourage acceleration — although the driver has to ensure the car can slow down for those flat corners. Recent pole speeds have been in the 29-second range, although last year’s Next Gen pole so far was 29.96 seconds and this year’s was 30.52 seconds.
The race (2:30 p.m. ET, USA Network) runs 301 laps, with stage breaks at lap 70 and lap 185. With seven races left before the playoffs, stage points are critical for the drivers competing for the regular-season championship. Everyone else just wants a win.
If you’re putting together a fantasy lineup or wagering on the race, here’s some data to help you pick your drivers.
New Hampshire performance
Using data from a driver’s entire career doesn’t account for factors like drivers changing teams or improving at certain types of tracks. I use data from the last five years to get a range of numbers without letting one finish skew the averages too much.
Because the Cup Series only visits New Hampshire once a year, there is only one race’s data for the Next Gen car.
Below, I show the 10 drivers with average finishes under 14 at New Hampshire.
A couple notes on these averages:
I did not include Austin Cindric’s 13.0 average finish because he has only one race at New Hampshire.
Ryan Newman might be a dark-horse prospect with a 14.5 average finish over the last four races of his career.
Christopher Bell’s 10.3 average is a little misleading. He’s run only three races. His first- and second-place finishes with Joe Gibbs Racing are offset by a 28th-place finish during the year he ran for Leavine Family Racing. Bell is also the defending champion and the only New Hampshire winner in the Next Gen car.
Kevin Harvick has a 3.6 average finish in his last five New Hampshire races. That’s more than two positions better than the next best average finishing position.
Bell, Aric Almirola and Brad Keselowski have each won once in the last five years, although Keselowski won under a different owner. Harvick won the other two races. Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano have each won at New Hampshire, most recently in 2017 and 2014 respectively.
Harvick is the only driver in Sunday’s race to have finished in the top 10 in all five recent New Hampshire races. Keselowski, Logano, Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr. earned top-10 finishes in four out of the last five races.
Harvick also has the best recent top-five rate at 80.0%. Only Harvick, Bell and Truex have finished in the top five more often than they’ve finished out of it in the last five races at the flat track.
Last week’s winner, William Byron, has never finished in the top 10 in five races at New Hampshire. His best finish was 11th place last year and in 2020.
Although Elliott ranks ninth out of 10 drivers in average finish, he did finish second last year in the Next Gen car.
Qualifying matters
Only six of the 51 Cup races at New Hampshire have been won from the pole. All six happened since 1998 — and four of those six races were won by drivers in Sunday’s field: Kyle Busch, Harvick and Newman. However, the most recent of those wins from the pole was Busch in 2017.
Almirola won from 22nd place in 2021; however, that race was unusual in that it was shortened by darkness. Aside from Almirola, the furthest back a winner has started in the last five years is 14th place. Harvick won from 14th in 2018 and 2019. He starts 13th on Sunday.
In the last five races, 10 out of 25 drivers (40%) who started in the top five also finished in the top five. Two of the remaining 15 didn’t finish the race. Also, 62.5% of the drivers who started in the top 10 also finished in the top 10.
Additional factors
The driver heat index is the difference between a driver’s season average and his last three races. Elliott has a positive heat index (5.17), as do Byron (4.75) and Hamlin (4.40.)
Harvick has the worst heat index at -12.98. Blaney comes in at -11.32 and Truex at -8.05. I wouldn’t weigh the negative heat index as much this week because the last two races were two of the more unusual races of the season.
I summarized factors that I think affect wins in the diagram below by color. Darker is better.
I included average finishes at Richmond and Phoenix in the chart because they are similar tracks to New Hampshire. I also gave Bell a bump in average finish for the reasons mentioned above.
Harvick, Truex, Hamlin and Bell stand out as the four drivers for Sunday’s race.
New Hampshire’s rate of hosting a driver’s first win of the season in the run-up to the playoffs is the same as Daytona’s. With Harvick scoring well in most categories — and being the highest-ranked driver without a win — he’s a tempting first choice.
Harvick’s downside, however, is that Ford has won only two races this year and both were at larger tracks. Harvick also needs to shake off the negative momentum of the past three weeks.
I think Harvick is worth the risk, but you might feel safer choosing one of the Toyotas, including pole-sitter Bell.
