For most of Friday's practice session at the New Hampshire International Speedway, Jon Wood looked like a student cramming for a final exam. He poured through pages of notes and thumbed through piles of handwritten notes as he tried to every ounce of speed for his No. 21 BrandonElam.com Ford.

That study session paid off with a ninth-place finish in the New Hampshire 200.

Wood's team has dedicated the past month to getting their short track program up to speed in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Although New Hampshire is a one-mile oval, the flat banking forces teams to approach it like an over-sized short track. Wood and crew chief John Monsam went through several chassis setups during practice, then they spent more than an hour in the garage comparing notes.

For Wood, Saturday's effort was his third Top-10 finish in five truck series starts for Wood Brothers/JTG Racing.

Wood will take the No. 21 BrandonElam.com Ford F-150 to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway for next Saturday's Smith's Las Vegas 350.

Jon Wood, Driver No. 21 BrandonElam.com Ford F-150:
"I'll be honest with you, we're trying a lot of different things each week on our short track program because it's not like what our speedway packages are," he said. "One minute you might say it's really struggling and then we hit on it as we did today. The caution did help, but I think had we been able to restart the race at that particular point, I would have been able to finish there anyway. I passed guys that had been running there, it just took us until that point to get the truck where it was good. Again, we're experimenting each week at these flat tracks and short tracks and it's finally starting to pay off.

"We're really looking forward to racing at Las Vegas next week. We've saved our best car for that race. We came here wanting to make progress with our short track program, and we did that. Now we're going to a better track for this No. 21 BrandonElam.com Ford. Our goals are a lot more ambitious for next week."