It’s been five months since No. 19 Carl Edwards won his only two races of the season (in succession), yet he remains in the thick of the Sprint Cup Series championship hunt. He hasn’t been in as good a shape heading into New Hampshire either, as he has failed to crack the top 10 in each of his past three starts.
However, Edwards has quite a solid pedigree from his appearances in Loudon, having two poles and an average finish of 10.7 in his career as a Joe Gibbs Racing driver on Sunday’s track. The 2007 Busch Series champion also has 15 top-10 finishes for the season, indeed making him a worthy dark horse pick this week.
If Edwards is trending in the wrong direction, Brad Keselowski, on the other hand, is picking up steam at the right time. As one of Penske Racing’s prized drivers (Joey Logano being the other, whom we’ve also given a ton of praise to in our preview of the Bad Boy Off Road 300), Keselowski has top-10 finishes in six of his last seven starts, with all but one of those finishes within the top five.
To further strengthen his case for this week’s race, the former Sprint Cup series champ has a superb average finish of 7.4 in his last five trips to New Hampshire Motor Speedway, having led a combined 322 laps during that span. That being said, it’s no wonder then why Keselowski is also a great sleeper candidate to win his second Sprint Cup title this season at a cool price of +800.
At 41 years of age, future NASCAR Hall-of-Famer Jimmie Johnson has refused to put his feet off the gas pedal. He has a couple of victories and seven top-five finishes this year, and he’s pretty much a shoo-in for the Round of 12 given his current eighth-place ranking in the drivers’ standings.
And when autumn season strikes in New Hampshire, that’s the moment when the six-time Sprint Cup Series champion steps up and shines. In his last four races at NHMS held in the fall, he has a smashing 4.3 average finish, including being the runner-up in the 2012 edition of the late-season race at the Granite State.
