Massachusetts residents know the names of cities and towns aren’t always pronounced as they appear. So when New Hampshire Motor Speedway put NASCAR drivers to the test, it did not end well.
Actually, it was a wreck.
Here is how the drivers failed:
Ayer: Sounds like “air.” But driver Michael McDowell cracks a joke, thinking it is pronounced “Er” as in “Er Maty.” AJ Allmendinger seems to know it is pronounced like the word “air” and pokes fun at it asking, “Didn’t they make a song about this town? Hands in the ayer, a-a-ayer!”
Driver Joey Logano is from Connecticut, yet he whiffed: “Ehr.”
Billerica: This is a tricky one, with the local pronunciation depending on how many of the middle letters you want to leave out. Allmendinger, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Martin Truex all went for “Bil-ah-rica.” Brad Keselowski had another interesting try, “Bil-ah-tia.”
Tyngsboro: Probably the easiest, but Earnhardt butchered it, saying “Teyns-boro.”
Truex and Allmendinger got it right. So did Ricky Stenhouse: “Bam! I got lucky on that one!”
Lucky for the drivers, they have time to practice; the New Hampshire 200 runs at the Loudon, N.H., track in July.
