Almirola loves racing at NHMS
Turns NASCAR stop into vacation
There are a few race weekends every NASCAR season that Aric Almirola looks forward to more than others because of what he’s able to do beyond the race track.
The annual summer trip to New Hampshire makes that cut.
Over the last few years, when Almirola has been finished with his racing duties at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, he has taken a family road trip around the New England area. It’s a way for Almirola, who’s from Florida, to catch up with friends he hasn’t seen in a while.
And during a long racing season, it’s a way to help break up his work responsibilities to not feel like, well, work.
“There’s a lot of race weekends I show up to the race track and it’s just me or me and my family and we’re there, I’m just there to work,” Almirola said. “I’ve got friends that live in the New Hampshire area and New England area, so being able to visit and see them almost makes going to the races seem a little bit like a vacation, just being able to go see people that you haven’t seen in a year.”
This year is no different. When the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series makes its way to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the Foxwoods Resort Casino 301 on July 21 — the circuit’s lone visit of the season to New Hampshire — Almirola and his family will continue the tradition. They plan to cruise over to Vermont after the race and spend a few days in Maine before heading to Pocono for the following week’s race.
Almirola hopes to be in a victorious mood for the post-race road trip after coming up painfully short of his first win with StewartHaas Racing last season. Almirola led 42 laps and was leading late, but finished third after losing a few spots on pit road and making a mistake on a restart.
Though he took a topthree finish, Almirola, who felt like he had the best car that day, wasn’t happy.
“We felt like we could have won that race or should have won that race and I didn’t get the job done,” Almirola said. “I just remember being really upset and disappointed thinking I was going to get my first win for Stewart-Haas Racing … and as the laps were winding down, feeling like that was going to be realistic and then right there in the closing laps, to have it slip away, was really disappointing.”
Almirola said he’ll come back to New Hampshire in a few weeks ready to put those hard lessons to use.
“Any time you go to a place and you run well, it gives you a whole other level of confidence going back to that race track,” he said. “After the success we had last year, I’m excited and looking forward to going to New Hampshire, feeling like that’s a place that we’re certainly capable of going and winning.”
Wins have been hard to come by for Almirola, who’s in his second full season as a driver with Stewart-Haas Racing. He scored his first victory with his new team at Talladega in last year’s playoffs — which helped finish a career-best fifth in the final standings — but hasn’t won this season.
Still, Almirola is in good shape in the standings as he enters the final stretch into this year’s playoffs. He’s 11th heading into this week’s race at Daytona, and is hoping to hit a higher level as the second half of the season begins — which includes that anticipated race at NHMS.
“We’ve had a good season but it hasn’t been great,” Almirola said. “I think we want it to be great, that’s our level of expectation, and good is just honestly not good enough. We want to be great and we want to win races and we want to be in contention to win every week. So, we just haven’t had that yet. We’ve had good races, we’ve put together a solid string of top 10s this year, but we just have not been capable of going to victory lane yet, and that’s what we strive for. We’re working really, really hard to win.”