Newburgh’s Ricky Craven had an up-and-down day before finishing 17th at the Pepsi 400 Winston Cup race in his Tide Ford Taurus at Michigan International Speedway Sunday.

He started 16th, moved up to sixth in just six laps, and continued to run in the top 10 for a good portion of the race. He actually led a lap and picked up five bonus points.

But Craven felt he had a much better car than 17th and blamed himself for the finish.

He decided to take just two right-side tires on lap 165 to gain track position in the strategy-filled 200-lap race and it wound up costing him.

Craven began losing positions and pitted for a four-tire change during a caution with just 16 laps remaining.

He returned to the track in 25th place and passed eight cars in the final 11 laps to finish 17th.

“It was frustrating because we ran top 10 much of the day, particularly the first half of the race,” said Craven in his PPI-Motorsports Web site. “We went back and made a big adjustment and fell back to 26th or 28th, but we charged to the top 10 again. Then it just got away from us at the end. I wanted to take two tires with 30 to go and that ended up being a very stupid move, but I did it. Then we got four tires, but we didn’t have track position with 10 to go. We came from way back to 17th, but it’s just frustrating. The car had potential and the day had potential.”

It is his ninth top-20 finish in the last 13 races but he hasn’t finished higher than 17th since his seventh-place finish at the MBNA Platinum 400 at Dover Downs International Speedway on June 2.

Craven, who will be driving a Pontiac next season, will next run the Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway (Tenn.) on Saturday night.

NASCAR issues schedules

NASCAR released its 2003 schedules for the Winston Cup and Busch series’ on Monday, with few changes.

The Winston Cup season will again be 36 championship events, beginning with the Daytona 500 on Feb. 16. The schedule will end at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Nov. 16.

There are no changes from 2002 in number of races or sites. However, the annual fall event at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C., was switched from a Sunday afternoon race to a Saturday night event, to be run Oct. 11.

The only other change swapped the dates of the fall races at Talladega Superspeedway and Kansas Speedway. The series will run at Talladega on Sept. 28, and in Kansas on Oct. 5.

Meanwhile, the 2003 Busch Series schedule was also released and will feature 34 races beginning at Daytona International Speedway and ending at Homestead.

There are no changes from 2002 in terms of the number of races, but New Hampshire International Speedway and Gateway International Raceway in St. Louis will swap dates.

Instead of racing at NHIS in May, the Busch series will join the Winston Cup series there in July. Gateway, which formerly had a July date, will switch to May 10.