ON SITE: More scores for Camping World East Series independent teams

Sylvania 300 weekend coverage presented by Mainely Motorsports

Steve Park sat at a table on Thursday afternoon at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

He looked to his right and saw the last Camping World East Series race winner at the track, Eddie MacDonald. He looked to his left and saw Peyton Sellers, who had just won the pole for today’s Heulva Good! Fall 125.

And then he professed how proud he was of the independent teams for putting their best collective foot forward at the series’ biggest oval track, sweeping the top three qualifying spots.

"What’s amazing to me is you sit and look around and there’s three pretty independent teams sitting here," Park said, alluding to the obvious Sprint Cup Series influence in the East Series now, with development drivers and programs running the schedule. "We do the best we can week in and week out and try and put these teams... where they’re just as good as the other guys.

"I think it’s a credit to our organizations."

Perhaps the series’ benchmark now for independent teams is the No. 40 of Matt Kobyluck – who leads the series standings by 176 points with three races remaining. The Uncasville, Conn., driver’s won four of the 10 races held so far in 2008.

"The series, if you go up to the Truck Series or the Nationwide Series or the Cup Series, the level of competition in our series is as broad as it is in those series," Kobyluck said. "It’s tough. These guys have a lot of resources and engineers – shaker rigs, wind tunnels, all these resources at their disposal that we just don’t have.

"When it comes down to it, like I’ve always said, you can have all those resources at your disposal but you’ve still got to have the people to utilize all of them to make you a better team."

Kobyluck also said that the ability of Cup-affiliated teams in the East Series to research and test is only one part of the racing equation. He still believes in what happens on race day.

"Our sport continues to change, but we’re keeping up with that," Kobyluck said. "We many not have the things at our disposal to try things when we’re not at the race track – but the only thing that really matters is what happens at the race track. We can change things, we can adapt and we can also go back to what we know works."

Knowing what works is that Park and Sellers believe helped independent teams in Thursday’s qualifying. Sellers, who drives for Andy Santerre Motorsports, said that Santerre’s history in New England and his track record at Loudon certainly helped the No. 44, which is looking for its first win of the year.

"You kind of have a home field advantage here over some of these other guys that maybe have only been here two or three times," said Park, who has competed in all five divisions that currently compete at NHMS – Cup, Nationwide, Truck, Modified and East Series. "We definitely don’t have a money advantage, that’s for sure.

"It made me proud to see a guy like Eddie (MacDonald) come up to New Hampshire and win (in June) with everything that he’s up against."