Michael Annett and the No. 43 Pilot Travel Centers team head to New Hampshire Motor Speedway this weekend for the only NASCAR Nationwide series (NNS) race on the schedule at the flat-banked track.
Annett has four starts at the one-mile track with one top-10 finish. In those four starts, his average finish is 14th and his best finish of seventh came in 2011. Annett ranks sixth among drivers in the NASCAR Nationwide Series in green flag passes at the track with 112 and 12th among drivers in number of laps ran in the top-15 during the race.
Annett may have an advantage with spotter Tim Fedewa guiding him around the track this weekend. Fedewa has one pole and one win, two top-fives and three top-10 finishes at New Hampshire as a driver in the NNS.
If you’re attending the race at New Hampshire this weekend, stop by the Ford Racing display on Saturday from 1:15 – 1:30 p.m. ET with your questions for Annett.
Comments from the No. 43 Pilot Travel Centers Ford Mustang driver Michael Annett:
“I’m looking forward to going to New Hampshire. I finished seventh there in 2011 and just outside of the top-10 last year. We’ve had some good cars and solid finishes since Charlotte, but I’m hoping that Loudon is the track where we really start to turn some heads. This summer stretch is always fun, and it’s where we really excelled last year.
“The track is a little more challenging than the other short-tracks because of the bumps, especially in Turn Three. I feel like we got a pretty good handle on that last year and if we start our practice day where we left off last year and use the two practices to work on it we’ll be set for a solid top-five finish.”
Comments from Crew Chief Philippe Lopez on New Hampshire:
“We run the same car or very similar cars at Richmond, Phoenix and Loudon; those are all very similar types of tracks. Loudon is a little bit different because it’s a bit flatter in the corners and has a lot of bumps going into Turn Three. It’s a challenge trying to get the car as soft as possible to handle well, but the bumps dictate that you get the car off the ground. It poses problems unlike the other two short tracks.
“Because tire wear has generally been good at New Hampshire, you definitely have to work on the long runs. It’s not so much about being fast on the short run, although you can’t give it up, but the long run cars tend to do well there because New Hampshire ends up being a fuel mileage race, three times out of five. You have to go a long way on tires and a long way on gas.
“On the Nationwide side, I think the Ford’s have the advantage on fuel mileage. It seems like every week when we’re trying to figure out when we can come in, we always start hearing radio chatter about the other manufacturers coming in about three, four, five laps sooner than us. Sometimes it makes us second guess our calculations, but we always seem to be right on and it’s becoming a weekly occurrence. We definitely get good gas mileage, so hats off to Doug Yates and his team.”
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