Story By: JORDAN WOOD / WOOD BROTHERS RACING – LOUDON, NH – Harrison Burton and the No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane team emerged from a marathon day at New Hampshire Motor Speedway with a 14th-place finish in Sunday’s USA TODAY 301. With weather a constant threat, Sunday’s race started on a dry track and ended on a rapidly drying wet one.
Burton took the green flag from 27th place after rain on Saturday led to the field being set using metrics based on recent performances. He moved into the top 25 by the 15th lap and ended the first 70-lap Stage, which ran without a caution flag, in 23rd place.
After a pit stop during the Stage break, Burton restarted the second Stage from 25th place. He fell back a bit in the early laps of the Stage and fell off the lead lap during the 118th circuit as the field made green-flag pit stops.
A caution flag for an incident involving Daniel Hemric allowed Burton and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane team to opt for the wave-around and rejoin the lead lap. A subsequent yellow flag for a spin involving Kyle Busch allowed Burton and the team to pit at Lap 155 and rejoin the race with four fresh tires and a full tank of fuel.
Back in the top 25, Burton continued to move forward and ended Stage Two in 20th place.
With rain appearing imminent, the Motorcraft/Quick Lane team elected to take just two tires on a pit stop during the Stage break and moved up to seventh place in the running order. Burton was able to post good speed with just two fresh tires and was running 12th when the cars were brought to pit road because of rain.
After a delay of two hours and 14 minutes, drivers returned to the partially dried track on treaded wet-weather tires.
Burton drove into the top 10 just after the restart, then fell outside the top 20 before breaking back into the top 10 with 25 of the scheduled 301 laps left to run. He was running seventh when the race’s final caution flag set up a two-lap Overtime run to the finish. That run didn’t work out in his favor, and he dropped to 14th at the checkered flag. It was his second consecutive top-20 finish and his third straight among the top 25.
Burton told reporters at the track that he was frustrated by the way the Overtime finish played out.
“I think we should have finished a lot better,” he said. “We picked the bottom on the last restart, and if I had it back I would pick the top…..
“You never know how it works out. It is a bummer to not finish it off. It felt like we had a good car once it went to the wet especially.”
He said tire management was a key factor.
“The caution came out with nine to go and that was really good timing,” he said. “It is easy to be mad now but also thankful that it came out because my right rear was pretty hurt. “We just have to figure out everything there and go over our process on choose. I would like to finish it off better next time, but we had a good car, and I am proud of our guys.”
Next up for Burton and the Wood Brothers team is a 400-miler next Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway.