Rain cancels Loudon qualifying New England 300 lineup based on owner points; Craven to start 17th

LOUDON,. N.H. – If you follow the career of NASCAR Winston Cup driver Ricky Craven, you could look at the cancellation of Friday’s qualifying for the New England 300 a couple of ways.

Since qualifying was rained out, Newburgh native Craven will start 17th on Sunday because starting position is dictated by owner points.

On one hand, Craven’s average qualifying position this season has been 25.6. So he will start eight places better. The negative is his average qualifying position at New Hampshire International Speedway in 13 previous starts has been 11.3.

Craven and PPI Motorsports Team owner Cal Wells III agreed that if there had been qualifying, they were confident Craven would have been higher than 17th in the starting grid on Sunday. The fact they tested his new Tide Pontiac two weeks ago fortified their contention.

But neither was going to lose any sleep over Friday’s developments.

“I would have liked to have qualified today but, at the same time, it’s not the priority. The priority is Sunday,” said Craven.

“I’m pretty disappointed about that,” said Wells. “But we could have started a lot worse than 17th..

“We’ll be fine. We’ll be able to work our way up. I’m not worried about it,” Wells added. “We’ve got a very, very, very good race car. We’ve put a lot of work into it. We’ve done a lot of testing. I feel good about it. We’ll be very stout here.”

Matt Kenseth earned the pole. Jeff Gordon, who trails Kenseth by 165 points in the standings, will start second. Dale Earnhardt Jr. gets the third spot. Bobby Labonte will start fourth and Michael Waltrip got the fifth spot.

Craven has started better than 17th just four times in 18 races so far. Sunday’s race will mark the third time this season he has started 17th. In those two races, he finished 27th at the Virginia 500 at Martinsville Speedway and 43rd at the Pepsi 400 at Daytona Beach.

Craven feels the testing will help his chances.

“We’ve got tomorrow’s practice, which will be valuable, but we tested here and that should pay off. If there’s a lack of practice, that should pay off to some degree. I have a good feel for the track. When we tested, there were only three Winston Cup teams. It’ll be a completely different track tomorrow afternoon when we have an hour and a half practice,” said Craven.

Craven finished sixth in the New Hampshire 300 last September after starting eighth.

But he expects a better result on Sunday and he feels a win is feasible.

“We ran fourth, fifth and sixth for most of that race but, unless there was trouble in front of us, we were probably going to finish fourth, fifth or sixth,” said Craven. “We just weren’t good enough to win the race last year so we tested for one reason: to come here and give ourselves a better chance to win.”

Craven’s average finish at NHIS has been 24.5 and he has two top-10 finishes.

He will be looking to break a three-race stretch in which he has not finished any higher than 21st. That has dropped him from 13th to 17th in the points.

His average finish this season has been 19.9.