One month from today, the New England 300 will take place at New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, N.H.

And for the first time since 1996, the Busch Grand National and the Busch North series will hold races on the same weekend with the Winston Cup cars.

There will also be a Featherlite Modified race.

“The significant change, obviously, is we have gone back and redone the paving,” said Fred Neergaard, NHIS’ media relations director. “Bob and Gary [Bahre] want the optimum surface for racing.”

The oft-maligned 1.058-mile oval has always had just one preferred groove which has made passing difficult.

“We repaved the same turn areas we did last year. They wanted to do turns three and four because they weren’t as happy as they were with the job done paving turns one and two. But the feeling was if you do one set of turns, you might as well do both. That makes it equal so the drivers don’t have to figure out the variants in the asphalt,” explained Neergaard.

The job was completed in April.

He also pointed out that they ran the pavement a little more into the straightaway areas “to make the transition even smoother.

“And they moved the asphalt up another groove, another 12 feet beyond the original work toward the wall,” said Neergaard.

The race weekend will begin on Thursday, July 17, when the Busch North and Featherlites qualify. On Friday, there will be qualifying for the Winston Cup and Busch Grand National teams and the Featherlite race (New England 100).

The Busch Grand National and North series races (New England 200 and 125, respectively, will be Saturday along with Winston Cup practice sessions.

Then the New England 300 will be on Sunday at 1:30.

Neergaard said Winston Cup drivers Matt Kenseth, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton, Joe Nemechek and Jamie McMurray are also expected to run the BGN race.

Kenseth leads the Winston Cup points.

NHIS landed the BGN race by swapping dates with Gateway International Raceway in Madison, Ill. The BGN race at Loudon had been in May.

He also said having four race series at NHIS the same weekend gives the young drivers in the Busch and Featherlite series some valuable exposure and an opportunity to showcase their talents in front of Winston Cup team owners.

“This track requires drivers to concentrate every lap. It’s a good challenge for their driving skills,” said Neergaard.

He added that Busch North has had a “pretty good legacy. The shining star is Ricky [Craven].”

Newburgh native and Winston Cup driver Craven was the 1991 Busch North points champion.

Stock cars keeping Taylor busy

Farmington’s Jeff Taylor is plenty busy at Distance Racing Products in Fairfield these days.

The 36-year-old Taylor and three employees build and work on Pro Stock and Late Model race car chassis and bodies.

“Things have been going real well. We have all the work we could hope for on our end,” said Taylor, who bought the business from Stan Meserve and moved it from Unity to Fairfield four years ago.

“We quadrupled the work space and storage space. We needed to do that a lot time ago. And our shop is a lot easier to get to than the one in Unity was,” said Taylor, who estimates he has 150-175 customers.

“Some of them you see once or twice a year at the most and others you see every other day,” said Taylor.

PASS returns to Speedway 95

The Pro All-Stars Series returns to Hermon’s Speedway 95 on Saturday night for the fifth event in the 16-race series.

Wiscasset’s Scott Chubbuck won the Speedway 95 PASS race last June and is currently tied for second in points with Dave Gorveatt of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

Defending points champ Ben Rowe of Turner, the only multiple-race winner so far with two, leads them by 32 points.

The time trials begin at 5:45 and racing begins at 7. The card will also include Speedway 95’s regular Saturday race program.