LOUDON, N.H. – The band that used to be Bill Haley and the Comets were scheduled to perform after the rain-marred thatlook.com 300 Winston Cup race at New Hampshire International Speedway. They never did perform due to the rain.

But instead of Rock Around the Clock, it was “Rick Around the Track” for 62 early laps as Newburgh’s Ricky Craven led from lap three to 65.

His Midwest Transit Chevy Monte Carlo was running well at the end but the second rainstorm of the afternoon ended the race 27 laps prematurely and Craven had to settle for a 17th-place finish, which is his best of the season.

His previous best had been a pair of 29th-place finishes.

Tony Stewart won the race.

Several of the cars that were ahead of Craven, including Stewart, would have needed to pit one more time for a splash of gas but Craven had pitted on lap 215 and said he wouldn’t have needed to pit again.

“We would have been top five, or at least top six,” said Craven. “But it’s like a basketball or a football game. Sometimes a [referee’s] call goes in your favor and sometimes it goes against you.”

However, Craven felt NASCAR officials shouldn’t have stopped the race when they did.

“If it’s a safety issue, you won’t get any dispute from me,” said Craven. “But they made a poor call. I thought we certainly could have run 20 more laps and maybe even finished the race. It had been raining at least that hard for the previous 50 laps [before they stopped it].”

Still, Craven was pleased with the run.

“This was a good, strong performance. Our finish wasn’t indicative of how we ran. It could have been fun [at the end],” said Craven. “This was easily the strongest run I have had with this team. We were honest contenders. We got out of [pit] sequence early and that came back to haunt us.”

It was his best finish since his 13th in the Jiffy Lube 300 at NHIS last July 11.

This is his second season with the team but his first full season.

Craven, who was one lap off the pace at the end, started fifth and wasted little time showcasing his Monte Carlo.

He took the lead on lap three and opened up a sizeable lead.

Several cars pitted on lap 29 but Craven and his nine closest pursuers stayed out.

Craven could have used a caution to pit but it never came and Geoffrey Bodine, driving for Scarborough native Joe Bessey’s Power Team Chevrolet, passed Craven on the inside of lap 65 and six other cars followed suit.

Craven pitted on a green flag on lap 83.

He pitted again on lap 102 and got into a fender-bender with Ward Burton, who cut him off, on lap 108. That dented Craven’s fender and Craven was forced to make three quick pit stops on a caution 16 laps later to fix it.

“Ricky’s car got tight because of that,” said crew chief Greg Conner.

“That probably hurt us as much as anything,” said Craven. “The car wasn’t quite as good after that.”

Craven had fallen as far back as 31st when the first rain delay resulted in a 53-minute red flag delay.

After the restart, he began working his way through the field and got as high as seventh following a series of pit stops by the leaders.

He made several challenges to get past Elliott Sadler in 16th place but couldn’t pull it off.

“It’s tough to pass on this track and we weren’t quite fast enough to get around him,” said Conner.

Conner admitted that the team took some calculated risks.

“We were going for the win. We weren’t racing the the points,” said Conner. “And Ricky loves racing here, it’s his home track. So that’s good for a half-a-second a lap.”

Craven, who pocketed $41,700, won’t enter the next Winston Cup race, the Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway on July 23, but will run the following race, the Brickyard 400, at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Aug. 5.