Dale Jarrett was able to salvage a 26th-place finish after a long, tough day at Infineon Raceway in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 last Sunday afternoon. After a promising qualifying result on Friday, Jarrett struggled to find the same speed out of his #44 UPS Toyota during the race. Now he and his team transition to the flat track of New Hampshire International Speedway to try and improve on the previous week's performance.
"We just struggled all day," Jarrett said. "It was the same thing all weekend where we just couldn't get any forward bite and just couldn't get it off the corners. We weren't very good (on the road course) and we have some work to do in that area. Hopefully we can improve by Watkins Glen."
The Lenox Industrial Tools 300 is scheduled for a 2:30 p.m. EDT start this Sunday.
Dale Jarrett Discusses Racing at New Hampshire International Speedway
What is it like to race at New Hampshire International Speedway?
"New Hampshire is a tough track. Three hundred laps don't seem like a lot, but you work your tail off at that place. The Bahre family repaved it a couple years ago which helped the racing quite a bit. It has improved and developed into a two-groove type of race track. The bottom groove right on the apron used to be the only way to get through the corners. But you'll see guys working the second groove and getting it to stick. But it can still be a real tough place to pass sometimes when guy's fenders get real wide and no one wants to give up any space. I've been very fortunate to have some good finishes at New Hampshire. With all the tight racing and rubbing that goes on there, I've been able to finish all but one race. And that one I got knocked out by someone else on a restart. So I enjoy racing there."
What has your team done to prepare for this week's race?
"We took a couple cars to test up in Milwaukee two weeks ago and found out a few things that might help. We never really got the car to turn exactly how we wanted it to, but there are a few things that showed up in the test that we'll try to incorporate this weekend in New Hampshire. We've really kind of struggled with our new Car of Tomorrow program and haven't gotten what we want out of it just yet. But our team is full of lots of smart guys and gals and Jason (Burdett) is plugging away every day. We may be able to pull together some notes from some of the earlier races like Martinsville, Phoenix and Richmond to get the car to loosen up a bit more and drive off the corner better. At New Hampshire we'll have to get that car to come off the corner real well to carry plenty of speed down those long straight-aways."
UPS Racing Team Notes of Interest
- Dale Jarrett recorded seven consecutive top 10's in the spring New Hampshire races from 1998 to 2003.
- The consecutive top-10 finish streak included a victory in 2001, Jarrett's only win at NHIS.
- In 24 starts, Jarrett has earned one win, seven top five's and 14 top 10's.
- Incredibly, in those 24 starts Jarrett has only one DNF while completing 97.76 percent of the laps run.
