NASCAR at New Hampshire: What you need to know

Distance: 301 laps, or 318 miles.

Where: New Hampshire Motor Speedway, a 1-mile, flat track in Loudon, New Hampshire.

When: 3 p.m. NBCSN.

Radio: PRN.

Last year’s winner: Matt Kenseth.

Also this week: Overton’s 200, Xfinity Series, New Hampshire, 4 p.m., Saturday, NBCSN.

Worth mentioning: As proof that big-time athletes can turn anything into a slight and use it as motivation, Martin Truex Jr.’s crew chief, Cole Pearn, said he hopes the team dominates at New Hampshire this weekend so writers will stop talking about how dominant they are at 1.5-mile tracks.

Who’s Hot/ Who’s Not

HOT

Michael McDowell: McDowell has eight consecutive top 25 finishes, the longest such stretch of his career. His average finish this year is 22.0—11.7 spots better than his career mark. He scored his first career top 5 two weeks ago at Daytona and is 25 th in points. He leads all drivers in laps completed. Though he has finished on the lead lap in just eight of 18 races, he has finished 5,164 laps—26 more than the driver with the next most (Daniel Suarez, 5,138).

NOT

Austin Dillon: In the six races since his first career victory (Charlotte), Dillon has not finished better than 13th . His average finish in that span is 21st.

Matt Crossman

This story was originally published July 13, 2017 at 12:34 PM with the headline "NASCAR at New Hampshire: What you need to know."