Raceday arrives

Raceday has arrived here at New Hampshire International Speedway, and the weather couldn't be better. With high temperatures expected to approach 83 degrees, and sun splashing the asphalt oval, the teams are arranging their pit boxes now prior to the 1:40 green flag.

Apologies to those who logged on to read the blog yesterday, but a busy day -- evidenced by the six stories in the Sunday Monitor -- made it a little tough to keep up with things. To recap, Kevin Harvick continued his domination on the Cup side by posting the fastest lap of final practice, and then the Busch East and Craftsman Truck Series contests were caution-filled, but each saw at least one driver parked for aggressive driving. For more on the mangled melee that was the Busch East race, here's Sean Caisse's comments after being wrecked by Matt Kobyluck:

“I had nowhere to go, really. I was pinched in. I was on the outside and I knew he was going to take me out and there was nothing I could do about it, so I just went along for the ride. It’s just unfortunate that you’ve got to race against people like this, because I’m running for a championship and the respect level that these drivers have for each other is just awful. Not even just me. I watched everybody on that race track just smash into each other.”

“How are we supposed to get fans in the stands when they have to watch half the caution laps, and we have to shorten the race because we can’t even get 10 full green-flag laps in?”

“We salvaged what we could with what we had, and we’re a strong team. We’re not giving up. We lost some points on Olsen, he didn’t have the best of luck, but we’re going to move forward, go on to Dover. We can’t let this bother us. I hope NASCAR makes the right decision and doesn’t let Matt run the rest of the year or ever again. He’s just a weapon.”

“When you hit someone like that, the intent isn’t to spin someone. It isn’t to wreck someone. That’s him going down the straightaway squeezing his wheel as hard as he can saying, ‘I’m going to frigging hit this guy and cause damage.’ I don’t know what would’ve happened if Brad Leighton wasn’t to the left of me, cause I spun so hard sideways – I drove into him – I could’ve gone across right into the grass and hit head-on with somebody.”

“I’m fine (physically), just a little disappointed.”

“Matt Kobyluck did it to me about a year ago. I was on the inside of him, and I was right up on his quarterpanel, and when I didn’t have much experience in the series,

“Normally what you do for everybody else is you go into the corner and try to pass him on the bottom. But his mentality is that he doesn’t want to see me pass him. It’s obvious. It’s very clear. I was underneath him like that, and I lifted early because I knew he was going to shoot to the bottom to try to frigging take me out – cause if you get to his door and he hits your right front, your right front pins up against his door and causes the car to spin out – so I lifted, he dove for the bottom, and he spun himself. I was actually laughing over the radio, because I knew he was going to do it.”

“It’s two weeks in a row. The week before we were running for the lead and he put me in the fence. How are you supposed to win a championship when you’ve got a guy like that? His ambition in the race is to make sure you don’t beat him, or win the title. I don’t know what his deal is.”

Are you a target of Kobyluck's?

“He’s got a lot of money. He’s got that big Mohegan Sun sponsor moolah, and he never made it in the sport. He’s just jealous. We’ve got some pretty good things coming up, Andy’s hooked me up with a great opportunity in the near future and he’s obviously jealous and he’s trying to make a final stab at me while he can. I’m not going to be racing too much longer. I just feel bad for everybody in the series who has to run up against a competitor like that. Everyone on that racetrack. There was no respect on that racetrack whatsoever.”

Check back throughout the day for interesting pre-race tidbits, and for live updates as the action unfolds on the track. We'll keep you up to date today. We promise.