ON SITE: Scott Payea feels he's finally hit on a setup

Scott Payea enters the TD Banknorth 250 as the American-Canadian Tour points leader, the poster child for the ACT hopes at winning the prestigious race.

But Payea can only laugh when he's asked about it's like to be on everyone's list of contenders after finishing 3rd in the event last summer.

"My whole career has kind of been under the radar and we've always seemed to just be there at the end of the race," Payea said after wrapping up practice on Saturday. "Leading the points -- there's nothing we can be sad about with that. You take everything that comes with it, because it just means you're having a good year. Hopefully, we can live up to these expectations that have maybe been put on us now."

Payea, of Milton, Vt., leads 7-time ACT champion Jean-Paul Cyr by 45 points through 8 races. He's already won twice this season.

"This is our 4th year together, and this is the first year that we've run the car we had the previous year," Payea said. "I think that helps. All our notes our good, and that's really a big plus. The car is just really working this year, and we're happy with it."

But that car has been so good, that Payea has left it home this weekend. He's brought the team's backup car to Oxford -- a track where, by his own admission, he's been "hit or miss." Payea will attempt to qualify the No. 89 car he piloted in 2006 to a pair of top-10 finishes at Oxford.

"With everything going on with tour, being in the points hunt, it's tough to bring that car here," Payea said. "Sure, this is a prestigious race, but we're really in the points race. But this is still a good car... It's no slouch."

It did, however, struggle for most of Saturday -- and it wasn't until late in the final hour of practice that the team felt it hit on something.

"The last 5 minutes was actually good. We've been terrible since we unloaded," Payea said. "We changed everything multiple times -- springs, shocks, over and over, and we just never seemed to get any better. Then we just threw a setup at it and it finally did what we wanted it to do, so we're pretty happy now."