.695 seconds.
That's the total margin of victory in three of the four NASCAR Sprint Cup Series this season. Two of those finishes, including Sunday's door-to-door finish between Kevin Harvick and Carl Edwards at Phoenix, were by one-hundredth (.010) of a second.
The fourth was ended under caution, but likely would have come down to a close finish, too.
Sunday's finish in the Grand Canyon State could be indicative to the type of finish we see at New Hampshire Motor Speedway this season. Granted, Phoenix is a tri-oval located in the Southwest, while the Magic Mile is a traditional oval positioned in the Northeast. But both tracks are similar in that they're both made of asphalt, they're both flat, and both lay out a little more than a mile in length.
The fact that Sunday's race was finished under such a competitive flurry of action certainly helps draw parallels to what we could possibly see in July and September this year.
Here's a list of the top-10 Cup finishes in NHMS history:
- July 1, 2007 - Denny Hamlin over Jeff Gordon by 0.068 seconds
- July 13, 1997 - Jeff Burton over Dale Earnhardt by 0.209 seconds
- Sept. 18, 2005 - Ryan Newman over Tony Stewart by 0.292 seconds
- July 16, 2006 - Kyle Busch over Carl Edwards by 0.406 seconds
- Sept. 19, 2010 - Clint Bowyer over Denny Hamlin by 0.477 seconds
- Sept. 14, 2008 - Greg Biffle over Jimmie Johnson by 0.505 seconds
- Sept. 22, 2013 - Matt Kenseth over Kyle Busch by 0.533 seconds
- July 14, 2013 - Brian Vickers over Kyle Busch by 0.582 seconds
- July 25, 2004 - Kurt Busch over Jeff Gordon by 0.607 seconds
- July 22, 2001 - Dale Jarrett over Jeff Gordon by 0.659 seconds
It's safe to say that some of the best racing at the Magic Mile has come under the Speedway Motorsports, Inc. moniker, with five of these top-10 finishes coming in the last eight years.
Between the changes to the rules package this season and the finishes we've seen this season, the 2016 New Hampshire 301 and/or the New England 300 just might find a place atop this list.
