Labonte happy with seventh in New Hampshire.

If someone had told Bobby Labonte after he had qualified 35th for the New England 300 that, during the race, he was going to do a complete 360 in the middle of turns one and two without hitting anything and then go on to finish in the top ten, he would have
probably thought the person was crazy.

As it turns out, not only did Labonte manage to perform his pirouette, but he also managed to bring the Interstate Batteries Pontiac home to a seventh-place finish, in the process learning some things that will hopefully help the team over the next couple of flat-track races.

"A top ten is pretty good, especially after last weekend [at Chicago], where we didn't finish at all," Labonte said, "The guys did a great job. It was kind of a typical Loudon deal. It was hard to pass. If you were on the bottom and got up a little bit out of the groove, it's tough to get back down there. But we started 35th and finished seventh, so I guess it wasn't too bad."

Labonte's opinion that the Loudon oval is a one-groove track has been proven by exactly that type of racing since 1990. In an effort to try and provide two-wide racing this year, though, the owners applied a sealer to the surface of the racetrack in hopes of making it grip better for the cars in the outside grove and thus provide more passing opportunities for the drivers.

"I've been here about 20 times and it's always been the same way," explained Labonte, "I don't care what they do, it's going to be about the same way. The sealer was pretty good - there was a lot of rubber built up on it and you could get some good grip up off the corner, but that just made it worse as far as making it a one-groove deal."

Accidents are a staple of single-groove racing, and Labonte was lucky to avoid many during the course of the Loudon event. While taking the green-flag on lap 240 though, Labonte was tapped on the left rear by Dale Earnhardt Jr as they fought for position and duly performed his 360 spin, which lost him a couple of positions on the track.

"It really didn't flat spot the tyres - I don't know if you can flat-spot the tyres here that badly," he recalled later, "I just did a little 360 over there after I got hit and came back. I actually got a chance to pass a lot of them back, so I kind of got back to where we started.

"All in all, we just lost some track position on it. We didn't really make it up until some other people had problems, but it was still a good day for the Interstate Batteries Pontiac. We had a good, fast racecar. We just couldn't get much track position. That last run was the worst run, but other than that, it was pretty good all day."