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By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

LOUDON, N.H.(Sept. 19, 2010) — The picture told the story.

Clint Bowyer’s No. 33 Chevrolet spun in a cloud of smoke as Bowyer celebrated Sunday’s victory in the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

In the same frame, Tony Stewart’s No. 14 Chevy coasted slowly across the finish line, out of fuel and out of the running for a race win that had seemed a distinct possibility barely more than a lap earlier.

Bowyer, the last driver to qualify for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, and Stewart both gambled on fuel after pitting for the last time on Lap 208 of 300 at the 1.058-mile racetrack.

Bowyer won, beating resilient Denny Hamlin to the finish line by .477 seconds and surging into second place in the Chase standings after the first of 10 races. Hamlin leads Bowyer by 35 points as the Sprint Cup Series heads to Dover.

Stewart lost, running out of fuel off Turn 4 while leading with the white flag—signaling one lap left—clearly in his sights.

“Just ran out,” was Stewart’s immediate, terse reaction to his fuel crisis, but it spoke volumes. The two-time series champion left Loudon in 11th place, 124 points behind Hamlin.

Bowyer was still in fuel-saving mode with Hamlin running him down on the final lap, but he mashed the pedal out of Turn 4.

“Wide open, stay in it—come on!” spotter Mike Dillon radioed to Bowyer as he rounded the final corner, almost as if he were driving a thoroughbred down the stretch.

Jamie McMurray finished third, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. fourth. Kevin Harvick, who led the standings after the first 26 races, ran fifth despite fighting handling problems throughout the race and is third in the standings, 45 points out of the lead. Jeff Gordon, David Reutimann, Ryan Newman, Kyle Busch and Sam Hornish Jr. rounded out the top 10.

Bowyer approached the first Chase race with optimism, his 2007 maiden victory at New Hampshire still fresh in his mind.

“I just had a feeling—this race just felt like (it did) back in 2007, and we did it again,” said Bowyer, who broke an 88-race winless drought with the third victory of his career.

The win didn’t come, however, until Stewart ran out of gas.

“I thought I could run (Stewart) down, but I was using so much fuel through the middle of the corner that I just had to back down,” Bowyer said. “I could tell in (crew chief Shane Wilson’s) voice—once you get that relationship with somebody, you can tell in his voice how nervous he was, and he sounded pretty nervous.”

Bowyer finally ran out of fuel during his burnout, and a wrecker pushed the winning car to Victory Lane. Stewart finished 24th on a day that saw Jimmie Johnson’s quest for a fifth straight championship slowed by a loose wheel late in the race. Johnson finished one position behind Stewart.

Hamlin, the top seed entering the Chase, survived a spin in Turn 4 that dropped him temporarily from third to 22nd. On Lap 214, as Hamlin was rolling through the corner, Carl Edwards’ No. 99 Ford slid up the track into Hamlin’s car and caused the spin.

“Can’t hold his line, can he?” Hamlin said sardonically, before Edwards’ spotter relayed a message of apology from his driver to Hamlin.

“I got mad on the radio for like 10 seconds, and it was like, ‘All right, what do we got to do; just tell me what we’ve got to do to get back up there,’ ” Hamlin said after the spin that forced him to pit road and eliminated potential fuel-mileage issues for the No. 11 Toyota.

“Normally, I think years ago, I really would have kind of flipped out, but I think now it’s just a little bit more relaxed.”

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1 2 33 Clint Bowyer Cheerios / Hamburger Helper Chevrolet
2 22 11 Denny Hamlin FedEx Small Business Toyota
3 4 1 Jamie McMurray McDonald’s Chevrolet
4 32 88 Dale Earnhardt Jr. AMP Energy / National Guard Chevrolet
5 27 29 Kevin Harvick Shell / Pennzoil Chevrolet
6 17 24 Jeff Gordon DuPont / National Guard Facebook Chevrolet
7 7 00 David Reutimann TUMS Toyota
8 24 39 Ryan Newman U.S. Army Chevrolet
9 9 18 Kyle Busch M&Ms Toyota
10 15 77 Sam Hornish Jr. Mobil 1 Dodge
11 10 99 Carl Edwards Aflac Ford
12 6 43 A J Allmendinger Insignia HDTV Ford
13 12 2 Kurt Busch Miller Lite Dodge
14 21 9 Kasey Kahne Budweiser Ford
15 13 31 Jeff Burton Caterpillar Chevrolet
16 5 42 Juan Pablo Montoya Energizer Chevrolet
17 14 16 Greg Biffle 3M Ford
18 1 12 Brad Keselowski No. 12 Penske / AAA Dodge
19 20 78 Regan Smith Furniture Row Racing Chevrolet
20 16 56 Martin Truex Jr. NAPA Auto Parts Toyota
21 19 19 Elliott Sadler Air Force Ford
22 11 6 David Ragan UPS Ford
23 33 17 Matt Kenseth Crown Royal Ford
24 3 14 Tony Stewart Office Depot / Old Spice Chevrolet
25 25 48 Jimmie Johnson Lowe’s / Johns Manville Chevrolet
26 29 7 Robby Gordon SpeedFactory.TV Toyota
27 37 83 Reed Sorenson Red Bull Toyota
28 8 98 Paul Menard Sylvania / Menards Ford
29 26 5 Mark Martin GoDaddy.com Chevrolet
30 23 47 Marcos Ambrose Bush’s Best Baked Beans / Kingsford Toyota
31 30 36 Dave Blaney Mohawk Northeast, Inc. Chevrolet
32 40 38 Travis Kvapil Long John Silver’s Ford
33 39 37 David Gilliland Taco Bell Ford
34 41 34 Tony Raines A&W All American Food Ford
35 31 20 Joey Logano Home Depot Toyota
36 28 82 Scott Speed Red Bull Toyota
37 42 71 Andy Lally TaxSlayer.com Chevrolet
38 18 13 Casey Mears GEICO Toyota
39 43 09 Bobby Labonte Phoenix Construction Chevrolet
40 35 87 Joe Nemechek NEMCO Motorsports Toyota
41 36 55 Mike Bliss PRISM Motorsports Toyota
42 34 64 Landon Cassill Little Joe’s Autos Toyota
43 38 46 Michael McDowell Cash America Dodge

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RACE RECAP | NEW HAMPSHIRE

10 Sam Hornish Jr.
9 Kyle Busch CH
8 Ryan Newman
7 David Reutimann
6 Jeff Gordon CH
5 Kevin Harvick CH
4 Dale Earnhardt Jr. – much needed good run
3 Jamie McMurray – solid day
2 Denny Hamlin CH – Recovered from an early spin

VICTORY LANE

1 Clint Bowyer ends an 88 race winless streak and rockets from 12th in points to 2nd. He led 177 of the 300 laps.

CH = CHase Driver

OTHER STORIES ON THE DAY

-Clint Bowyer dominated the first half of this race

-Scott Speed was spun early on and hit the inside wall

-While battling for position, Carl Edwards washed up the track and spun the 11 of Denny Hamlin

-Jimmie Johnson got fender damage from the 18 of Kyle Busch

-Chase drivers all had issues when Kurt Busch was spun by Jeff Burton, Kurt took blame by getting too hard into the turn. Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch got into each other and went for a tandem spin as a result as well.

-Brad Keselowski tapped the 17 of Matt Kenseth, sending that car hard into the wall. Matt finished 23rd

-Jimmie Johnson with a vibration late in the race, came to pit road. That put him a lap down sending him to a 25th finish

-Tony Stewart, and Jeff Burton ran out of fuel with almost 1 lap to go. Stewart finished 24th, Burton 15th. Tony lost 94 points by running out of fuel.

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By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

LOUDON, N.H. (Sept. 18, 2010)—At the end of a long two-man duel between polesitter and race winner Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick, James Buescher came within a whisker of stealing the show.

Driving his own No. 18 Toyota, Busch, however, surged ahead off Turn 2 Saturday at 1.058-mile New Hampshire Motor Speedway after a restart with two laps left in TheRaceDayRaffleSeries.com 175 to win the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race by .280 seconds over Buescher, who took issue with Busch’s tactics on Lap 174.

Buescher had taken the lead on Lap 166, diving beneath the two lead trucks after Harvick forced Busch up the track. When Ron Hornaday Jr. spun after contact from Timothy Peters’ Toyota and smacked the Turn 4 wall to cause the eighth caution of the race on Lap 169, Busch got his chance on the Lap 174 restart.

Buescher chose the outside lane and led Busch through Turn 1, but Busch powered back to the inside and nosed ahead of Buescher off Turn 2. Before he was clear of Buescher’s No. 31 Chevrolet, Busch moved up the track, turned across the left front of Buescher’s truck and hit the outside wall.

“On the restart before that, I kind of got washed up in the marbles and, unfortunately, got back there behind the 31,” said Busch, who won his fifth race in 11 truck series starts this season and the 80th race of his career in NASCAR’s top three series combined. “Then, on that last restart, I knew I needed to have a good run through (Turns) 1 and 2, and if I didn’t clear him off of 2, then he was going to run all the way down the back straightaway, side-drafting me and get back alongside of me and get me loose in 3.

“I knew I had to clear him. Regardless of what was going to happen, I had to clear him, and I tried rubbing off of him, and he was still there just a little bit, and it turned me into the wall. It was a hard hit. It knocked my helmet crooked. I wasn’t sure what I had getting into Turn 3 … but the truck felt fine through 3 and 4—I was surprised, really, that it felt the way it did—and we were just kind of able to mosey around for the next couple laps and bring it home.”

To Buescher, who has never won a race in any of NASCAR’s top three series, Busch’s aggressiveness went too far.

“He just went to the fence,” Buescher said. “He wasn’t clear at all. He drove like he had no truck on his outside, and he hit my left front and ended up in the wall. He just drove us dirty and got the win, and we hung in for a second-place finish.”

Harvick, who swapped the lead with Busch 14 times before Buescher passed them both on Lap 166, finished third. Matt Crafton ran fourth, followed by rookie Austin Dillon.

Todd Bodine came home ninth and leads eighth-place finisher Aric Almirola by 257 points in the battle for the series championship.

Harvick watched the incident between Busch and Buescher and offered his own perspective.

“I saw the 31 take off, and the 18 got a run on the bottom, and it looked to me like the 18 just drove over the front of him—that’s what it looked like,” said Harvick, who had raced side-by-side with Busch for large segments of the race. “I turned all the way to the left, because I thought they were going to be hung together—wrecked.

“But look, this is a short track, and everybody’s digging for everything they can get. I bounced off of Kyle as many times as he bounced off of everybody else. It’s not anything that any of us wouldn’t do to the other 10 times over again.”