Monday morning's peace and quiet in the sleepy little borough of Loudon, New Hampshire was shattered by the sound of stock cars as 22 NASCAR Grand National Division, Busch North Series teams and nine NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour teams came to test, three at a time, on the 1.058-mile New Hampshire International Speedway.

The full-fendered crew was made up of a mix of full-timers, part-timers, and first-timers. Those who needed no introduction to the Magic Mile included all three members of Grizco Racing (Andy Santerre, Mike Stefanik, and Brad Leighton), Ryan Seaman, Dale Shaw, Matt Kobyluck, Brian Hoar, Kelly and Ryan Moore, Mike Johnson, Bryon Chew, and Mike Olsen. Part-timers included Tracy Gordon, Ted Christopher, and Mike Gallo. There was a sizeable rookie crop, including Donny Lia, Charles Lewandoski, Sean Caisse, James Civali, Kenny Horton, Mike Perrotte, and Jeff Anton.

Transponders were not used for the test day, so recording lap times was left to team members who, one hoped, would report truthfully when asked who they had as fast. But lap times only count for so much, especially on a track that rewards conservation of equipment and tires, so most teams concentrated on making their cars comfortable on longer runs.

One of the first to pack up and head home for all the wrong reasons was Seaman. It was only slightly after lunchtime when the Toms River, N.J. driver encountered an engine problem and had to shut down the rest of the day.

"I heard a weird noise and felt something funny in the motor. I shut it down and coasted it in, and we pulled a rocker cover off to see I broke a rocker arm. I don't think we're going to try and fix it," he said.

"Even with the engine problem, we accomplished a lot. We unloaded, and on our third lap I ran a 31.50, that's about two tenths faster than I've ever run here before. We came in, changed a couple things around, and even on tires that had about a hundred laps on them we got down to the 31.40s. It was a very good day overall. I got a pretty good race car here."

Seaman will be racing, for all intents and purposes, a new car at NHIS.

"You can feel a big difference with this new car," he said. "It's a totally different front end than we've run here before. We had a strut front end car here last year, and I definitely like this A-arm car a whole lot better. This is my short-track car from last year. We had Billy Hess put front and rear clips on it, and had Bo Gallaway put a body on it. It's a big difference, and we're doing a lot of things different compared to what we did last year. I like it, and hopefully we'll get it straightened out and we'll be good when we come back here."

Seaman will be trying to better his best NHIS finish of sixteenth, scored last July.

Tracy Gordon and the Woodworks Racing Ford team had a full day of practicing, having brought a new car that had only been on the track once before, practicing for the rained-out Twin 100s at Thompson.

"We haven't been making big changes, just little changes," Gordon said. "But we've been running on old tires and we got to a point where we weren't making any progress, so we're going to tape up and do a run on new tires to see what we can do in qualifying just to see where we stack up with other guys who've been doing the same thing. We've been running 31.40s and 31.50s on these old tires, so we'll bolt on some new tires and see if we can get down to 31 flat. Then we'll put the old tires on again and work more on making sure the car will work better on old tires for the race. We'll know if we're in the ballpark when we put on the new tires."

We checked in with Gordon at the end of the day and asked if he was happy with the results of the sticker run.

"After we put on new tires, we turned our fastest laps of the day, but we still aren't fast enough," he said. "We're probably a half a second off from where we got to be when we do a sticker run. We're still a lot better than we were with last year's car, and we'll get it going good. We'll make some changes, and I'm going to try and get some different shocks and stuff to get a little more grip. Right now I think I'm losing grip. We should be better, and we'll be all right. The car's comfortable, so we can work on getting it better."

Back to a full-time competitor, we found Mike Johnson leaving earlier than most, having to call it a day as his Johnson Lumber Ford showed higher oil temperatures than desired.

"I tried some different things out: springs, sway bars," he said. "The track seemed to go back and forth a little bit, maybe because of all the debris and the sand they left on the track. It doesn't look like we're going to have as much track time as in years past. We won't have any time to chase anything once we get here. It looks like we get one practice and qualify in the afternoon, and there's no practice after that, just go out and race. We're going to have be ready to get out there and go as soon as we unload off the trailer, that'll be key. We won't have time to be tightening bolts and nuts. I'm glad we came today. We almost weren't going to come, we weren't really ready, but this prepared us more than we would have been if we didn't come. We found a few things we would have been chasing."

Sean Caisse made his series debut at NHIS last September, running in the front half of the pack before being eliminated in an accident within sight of the finish. He's back with Barney McRae and running extremely well, prompting one observer to note that it was a shock to the senses to consider that No. 5 car as a contender at New Hampshire.

"We started out and we were taking baby steps all day long," Caisse said. "Every time we got on the track we got faster and faster, and we got down to a 30.40. I think the pole last year was a 30.5, so we've got a really good race car. The motor is awesome, it pulls really good, so we're really happy. When we come back, we're not going to change a thing."

Mike Gallo can't wait until July. The former polesitter at New Hampshire, and outside polesitter the last time the series ran there, was putting in many laps in the JBR Racing X-1 Ford under the watchful eye of Steve Bird. Gallo didn't want to talk until after everything was done, and when it was, his usual enthusiasm for racing was vibrant on tape.

"We had a roller coaster day, and I had to knock the rust off at the start," he said. "I've had no seat time all year so at first I didn't know what I was doing. But by the end of the day we got down to turning a 30.50 in race trim, just taped up, and backed it up with two 30.60s. That'll put us in the show. I'm real proud of the guys, they did a great job getting the car together. The driver let them down most of the day, but we got it together. We'll come back here on the 15th to see if we can't finish what we started last year. I want a pole, almost as badly as I want a win."

Moore Racing showed up with a pair of cars, with Ryan in his standard white and Kelly gearing up to make his season debut in familiar NAPA blue. At the end of the day, both drivers agreed that the white car was faster, though Kelly qualified that statement.

"A lot of guys did full-blown qualifying run all taped up and on sticker tires," Ryan said. "We didn't do that. We were just about as quick as them on their qualifying runs while we were in race trim and on old tires. I'm really happy with the car, it drives real good and it's fast. That's always important here. We'll see how it comes in two weeks."

Kelly explained why the white car was faster.

"Ryan was quicker right at the end, but they did a simulated qualifying run," he said. "They didn't put on new tires but they did cool the tires. I was doing consecutive runs, and my car was real consistent on longer runs. We didn't do any long runs, but we ran as long as they'd let me and the car stayed nice and consistent."

Kelly also had to deal with a lack of track time this year and a car that was giving his team fits.

"I haven't been on the race track this year except in a Pro Stock which is a whole bunch different from what we just did, and it took a bit to get back used to a Busch car and the weight and the brakes and stuff. We didn't have the car just the way I wanted it, we found something wrong with the car that we didn't know was like that so we missed something putting the car together. Once we found that and I got my head back in the game we were okay.

"If you came and talked to me an hour and a half ago, I wouldn't have talked to you," he continued. "It was ugly. I was making a phone call at a quarter to four and I was pretty ugly, I had to get away from everybody. We had problems right off the start with radio first thing this morning, the power valve fell out of the carburetor, then we had problems with the alternator, and everything compounded and it threw us off our game all morning long. But we got back on it, and my new/old crew chief is getting a handle on it and I appreciate his being patient with me because I got a little raspy there. I'm not a good loser. I don't run second very well. But as long as I can run competitively I'll run. But I got out of the car once and I said if it's going to keep running like this, we won't even bring it back because I don't want to go out there and make a fool of myself. Test days are good for testing patience, too."

A new face in a Busch North car was Donny Lia, fresh off a Whelen Modified Tour win two days earlier at the Waterford Speedbowl. Lia was testing Ralph Solhem's No. 00 car which had been driven previously by Nevin George, who couldn't make it to NHIS for a Monday test. Lia quickly got up to speed and left the door open to the possibility of his driving the car when the series returns to NHIS for the race in July. He was also testing his Modified, jumping from car to car throughout the day.

"The cars are so different, but getting back into a Modified is like riding a bike," he said. "In the Busch car, every time I got in it I was learning quite a bit. When I got back in the Modified it was like I never left. I don't know anything about driving a Busch car so it's like I'm going at it totally blind. But it's a lot of fun, a completely different deal. You have to really finesse the Busch car, where there's no finessing a Modified.

"I liked the Busch car," Lia continued. "It's a challenge, that's the bottom line. And I like the challenge, I like learning new things, and I like running well. So to keep getting in it and trying to run better makes it fun. It's so different, it's the complete opposite of everything I know. To pick it up is a a real challenge, but we did good I think."

Lia is no slouch at sim racing, competing when his schedule allows in an online league using Papyrus' NASCAR 2003 software against, among others, the author. But he may have ruined our impression of the sim with his following statement.

"It's not like the game," he said of the Busch North car. "I have ten years experience driving the sim. That's like driving my Modified almost. But I'll tell you right now, when I'm good in the game, I slam the gas pedal down hard coming out of the turns. There's no slamming the gas pedal in the Busch car, so it and the game can't be all that much alike. There's not as much grip, I guess, in the real life deal. But the attitude of the car and everything, that's pretty similar, but you can't drive the real thing as hard as you can drive it in the game."

Another driver hoping to make his Busch North debut at New Hampshire International Speedway is Mike Perrotte. The DIRT Modified driver, who also operates Airborne International Raceway and races in its Dirt Mods On Asphalt division, is driving a former Dennis Demers car. He leases shop space and gets expertise by a name familiar to long-time Busch North fans, Bob Brunell.

"It's real different for me," Perrotte said, "and it's a tough place to get around. It was my first time in the car, and the first time on this track. It took a lot of getting used to. I needed a lot of laps here to get comfortable, and I don't think I quite got there yet. We're going to go back and check the car over, and get a video of some races here at Loudon and see if I can learn anything from those."

Ted Christopher jumped in Perrotte's car late in the afternoon and took it out for a few laps, which gave the team valuable information.

"He's one of the best asphalt drivers there is, and he has a lot of experience here. We can spend weeks here and try to figure this thing out, but someone like him can take the car out for three laps and tell us what's going on," Perrotte said. "The most important thing he told me is that I've got to step on the gas more."

The complete Busch North field will return to New Hampshire International Speedway on Thursday, July 14th for afternoon practice and qualifying. Friday features a doubleheader with the Whelen Modified Tour, which gets its green flag at 1:30 p.m. The NASCAR Nextel Cup and Busch Series run one-hour practices after the Modified race, and then the Busch North Series takes to the track for its 125-lap event with the start time slated for 5:00 p.m.