COT DEBUTING AT TALLADEGA

Ryan Newman will be making his 12th Cup start at Talladega Superspeedway. It will be his 218th career start in the Cup Series.

"This weekend is pretty much going to be a blank slate for everyone," Newman said. "It's the first time any of us will really get a chance to see how the COT car works on a superspeedway and I don't think there's any one driver or any one team that has a noticeable advantage this weekend. We've had some bad luck the last couple of weeks, so we're hoping to see some improvement this weekend and get another top 10 at Talladega like we did back in April."

Newman has an average start of 12.4 and an average finish of 19.8 at Talladega. He has five starts inside the top 10, including two from the top five. Newman's lowest start at the 2.66-mile track has been 28th in April of this year.

Newman has four top-10 finishes at Talladega, including a ninth-place finish in April 2007. He has three other finishes inside the top 20, but his last four races produced finishes of 33rd or lower.

Newman has led 25 laps in six Talladega races. He has completed 1,707 laps of a possible 2,080 since he made his Cup debut at the restrictor-plate track in 2002. Newman has a completion rate of 82.1 percent at the Alabama track.

The primary car for Talladega is chassis PRS-521, a new car that was tested at Talladega last month. That's the only time the car has been on the track. The backup car is PRS-515. It was tested at Talladega and was used during the June race at Dover where Newman qualified on the pole and finished second.

alltelracing.com