Newman once again takes wheel of 'Car of Tomorrow'

Friday, April 20, 2007

MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Once again, it's time for the “Car of Tomorrow” to race in the NASCAR Cup Series with the newly designed cars taking on the 1-mile Phoenix International Raceway - the first non-short track on which the car will appear.

The Subway Fresh Fit 500 at PIR on Saturday will be Ryan Newman's 10th Cup series start at the track in Avondale, Ariz. It is Newman's 196th start in NASCAR's top series.

Newman will start in 19th place for the race.

In nine races previous races at the track, Newman has had three consecutive poles – 2002-2004 – and a career-best, second-place finish in November 2004. He has six top-10 starts and two top-five finishes at the track. He has only two finishes outside the top 20, which were both DNFs after being involved in accidents. Newman's average start at PIR is 8.4, while his average finish is 20.4.

Newman expressed confidence in his car and the Alltel Team.

“We're back to the COT cars and this team has been working hard to figure out this new car and how it works,” he said. “We haven’t had bad runs in this car, but we got caught up in an accident at Bristol and we had the spin during qualifying in Martinsville, so we'll be looking to have better runs in Phoenix this weekend.”

Newman has led three races for 114 laps and has completed 2,524 laps of a possible 2,811, giving him an 89.7 percent completion rate.

Crew chief Mike Nelson and the Alltel crew will use chassis PRS-513 for Saturday night's Subway Fresh Fit 500. This is a new COT car, which was tested earlier this month at Richmond International Raceway. That is the only track time the car has seen.

Chassis PRS-509 is the backup car for Phoenix. This car has been the backup for the two previous COT races, but it was not used. This car was also tested at Richmond.

The Subway Fresh Fit 500 will be broadcast live by FOX and MRN Radio beginning at 8 p.m. EDT.