Ryan Newman was second fastest in qualifying at the Kansas Speedway on Friday, but after he failed post- qualifying inspection, he will start 42nd on Sunday.
The No.12 Alltel Dodge posted a lap of 30.876 seconds, second only to pole winner Jimmie Johnson, but his car was found to be too low in the post- qualifying inspection
What started as a good qualifying run that left Newman in second beside pole sitter Jimmie Johnson, turned into a bad start for Ryan Newman and the No. 12 Alltel Dodge Charger at Kansas Speedway.
Newman was just three one-hundredths of a second slower than Johnson, but following post-qualifying inspection, NASCAR officials deemed the Alltel Dodge Charger’s roof was too low and the right-rear quarter panel was too high. NASCAR disallowed Newman’s qualifying run, which relegated Newman to the 42nd starting position for Sunday’s 267-lap race in Kansas.
“I’m not sure what happened,” Newman said. “The car got through inspection before qualifying, but something wasn’t right when we went back through inspection after our run. We’ll just have to make up for this setback on Sunday.”
The team will also lose its position in pit stall selection. Instead of picking second, the team will select 42nd.
Coverage of Sunday’s Lifelock 400 from Kansas will be broadcast by ABC and MRN Radio beginning at 1 p.m. EDT.
Line-up for the Lifelock 400:
1. Jimmie Johnson, No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet
2. Matt Kenseth, No. 17 DeWalt Ford
3. Scott Riggs, No. 10 Valvoline/Stanley Tools Dodge
4. Jeff Gordon, No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet
5. Denny Hamlin, No. 11 FedEx Freight Chevrolet
12. Kurt Busch, No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge
42. Ryan Newman, No. 12 Alltel Dodge
"It was a good run for us. We picked up from practice and not many people did. I think (Jimmie) Johnson was the only other one that did. It was a good run for the alltell Dodge. We had four this year (poles), just so you know. Don’t sell me out short. It was a great effort for the Alltel Dodge and hopefully we’ll just keep going here."
| Ryan Newman's Stats | ||
| At Kansas Speedway | At Intermediate Tracks | |
| STARTS | 6 | 141 |
| POLES | 0 | NA |
| WINS | 1 | 11 |
| TOP 5 | 3 | 41 |
| TOP 10 | 3 | 61 |
| AVG START | 10.7 | 8.2 |
| AVG FINISH | 14.2 | 17.3 |
| LAPS COMP | 1557 | NA |
| % COMP | -0.9719 | NA |
| LAPS LED | 120 | NA |
| TOTAL $$$ | 688698 | NA |
Newman, Alltel Team Start 24th and Finish 28th after wreck-filled race at the 'Monster Mile'
Driver of the No. 12 Alltel Dodge Ryan Newman and XM Satellite Radio Host Claire B. Lang catch up to discuss the race from Dover International Speedway, where a late race melee involving both Penske cars ended the Alltel team's chances of securing a top-five finish. Newman and Lang also chat about a possible third Penske team with Sam Hornish Jr. at the helm in 2008.
Newman also takes fans inside his motor coach this week, divulging unique features about his home away from home. Finally, Newman previews the next race at Kansas Speedway, where he has previously found victory lane.
No matter how much the Chase participants may not like it, every driver who didn't make the Chase is in a position to take a strategic roll-of-the-dice to win this Sunday's Nextel Cup race at Kansas Speedway. After all, when you can't run for the championship, all that remains is winning races.
Tony Stewart showed one method of how to do it at Kansas last year, stretching his fuel to complete 71 laps on the 1.5-mile track. He coasted under the checkered flag ahead of a group of cars who also had prudently saved fuel during a long green-flag run. Stewart says it's the only race he's ever won by saving fuel.
Who are the five drivers and crew chiefs with top-15 capable cars willing to make the most desperate moves to get to Victory Lane in the last eight races?
1. Ryan Newman. The Rocketman has gone through 73 straight races without winning. Penske racing teammate Kurt Busch has two victories this season, so the Dodge equipment is there to do the job, and he made the Chase, too. Newman had back-to-back second places at Dover and Pocono, but has gone 13 straight races without a top-five. The No. 12 changed the crew chief, switching to Mike Nelson, after last season, and you wonder how long it will be before the team begins thinking of changing the driver. Newman is safe for '08, but he needs to start building for it with a win this year.
2. Bobby Labonte. The winner of 21 Cup races and the '00 championship hasn't won since joining Petty Enterprises last season and his winless streak has reached 136. Even tougher to take is Labonte doesn't have a top-five this season, but he does have three top-10s. At the legendary Petty team, the expectations might be lower for Labonte among the media and fans, but this a proud organization that hasn't won since 1999. Labonte came to Petty to help turn the team around and a win would do it in one fell swoop.
3. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Junior keeps acting like he's OK with running well -- he has seven top-fives, including a third at Dover last week -- but he doesn't want to depart DEI after going winless in a full season for the first time. Junior has gone 54 straight races without winning and needs to close the book on that streak before departing to Hendrick. It's certainly not the baggage he needs starting over with a new team and sponsors.
4. Kasey Kahne. This season's biggest flop needs to start rebuilding momentum and a single victory would do that. Kahne has only one top-five this season. Kahne won six races, all on 1.5- or 2-mile tracks, last season and five of the eight remaining races are on 1.5s. With Budweiser on board for next year, Kahne's future is secure at Gillette-Evernham, but it sure would reduce the pressure he'll face to get back to victory lane this season.
5. Greg Biffle. Biffle had an off season last year when he won two races, but missed the Chase. What do you call this year when he's gone winless? Terrible. Sure, Biffle is 15th in the points, but Roush Fenway teammates, Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth, have won races and made the Chase. Biffle started out with Pat Tryson as crew chief. The team fired Tryson, who joined Penske and guided Kurt Busch to the Chase, and Biffle has continued to have a lackluster season with three top-fives. He has too much talent to be where he is performance-wise. A victory in the last eight races would salvage something to take into the off-season.
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Sprint Cup ........... I really don't like that name. At All.
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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The 2008 Sprint Cup Series schedule was announced Wednesday, a 36-race slate that kicks off with the 50th running of the Daytona 500 on Sunday, Feb. 17 at Daytona International Speedway. The 2008 season also marks NASCAR's 60th year as stock-car racing's longest operating sanctioning body.
Following the "Great American Race" the series travels to Southern California, then to the bright lights of Las Vegas before returning to the Southeast for races at Atlanta and Bristol. The first scheduled off date for the series will be in March during the Easter holiday.
Following the race in Martinsville, the series makes another swing to the Southwest, racing at Texas and Phoenix in early April. The second scheduled off weekend occurs in mid-April.
The series then picks back up with races at Talladega, Richmond and Darlington prior to the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Challenge at Lowe's Motor Speedway.
"By running five consecutive points events before the first scheduled break in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, the 2008 schedule is designed to be even more fan-friendly," said NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France.
Another adjustment to the 2008 schedule is that the Chicago race will be run Saturday night.
"Night racing provides an additional element of intrigue and excitement," France said. "Running under the lights at Chicagoland on a Saturday night will be even more exciting for the fans in the stands as well as those watching from home."
Other key dates:
• The 30th annual Budweiser Shootout at Daytona will be held on Feb. 9.
• On Sunday, July 27, the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard will be held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
• On the evening of Saturday, Sept. 6, Richmond International Raceway will be the last opportunity for drivers to qualify for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.
• The week after Richmond, on Sunday, Sept. 14, New Hampshire again will have the kickoff event in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, which covers the season's last 10 races and determines the series champion.
• On Sunday, Nov. 16, Homestead-Miami Speedway will again host the season finale, where the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion will be crowned.
CLICK HERE to view the schedule
Ryan Newman will join several other NASCAR drivers Wednesday when they travel to Washington, D.C., to visit the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and spend time with soldiers who are back from Iraq and Afghanistan. The special day begins around 2 p.m. with visits to the hospital's different wards. After nearly three hours of talking with the soldiers, the drivers will spend an hour signing autographs and taking pictures with them.
A dinner and mini concert will occur just before the drivers get on stage for a brief question-and-answer session. Then it is off to Dulles International for their return to North Carolina before the drivers and teams leave for this weekend's Lifelock 400 at Kansas Speedway. This is Newman's first trip to the annual "Tribute to the Soldiers" event.
"I'm excited to go up to D.C. and visit with the troops. I didn't get to go last year when the drivers went up to Walter Reed, but I think it's a great opportunity for us to show the men and women in the military how much we support them," Newman said.
Newman will make his seventh Cup start at Kansas Speedway. It will be his 217th career start in the Cup Series.
Newman has an average start of 10.7 and an average finish of 14.2 at Kansas. He has started every race at the 1.5-mile track from inside the top 20, including two in the top 10. His best start came in 2002 when he qualified third.
Newman has three top-five finishes at Kansas, including a win in 2003. He finished second in his first two races at the Midwest track, but his last three have been from 23rd or lower.
Newman has led 118 laps in four Kansas races. He has completed 1,557 laps of a possible 1,602 since he made his Cup debut at Kansas in 2001. Newman has a completion rate of 97.2 percent at the Kansas track.
This weekend, the Alltel team will use PRS-071 as its primary car. This car last ran at California four weeks ago. Newman was running near the front when the car's engine expired, leaving him 39th at the finish. The backup car is PRS-108. It was last raced at Chicago in July where Newman qualified third and finished eighth.
Newman On Kansas: "We haven't had much luck in Kansas lately, but our intermediate program has been much better this year than it has been in the last couple of years. We're working hard to get a win for this team and for our sponsors before the year is over and I think the team has been doing a great job. We had great pit stops last weekend in Dover and had a good top-five run going, but things just didn't work out. Those things happen and now it's time to focus our efforts on Kansas."
Coors Light will announce Tuesday a $20 million deal over five years to become the official beer of NASCAR starting in January.
For Coors, the NASCAR deal also replaces its sponsorship of the No. 40 Dodge in the top-tier Nextel Cup Series.
"Our deal was up with those guys and this opportunity came up," says Andy England, chief marketer for Coors. "It feels like we are elevating our game."
| Sleeping Monster Wakes Up 14 Laps Too Soon It appeared that the Monster took the weekend off, but 14 laps from the finish six Dodges were collected in a 12-car-accident. Kurt Busch, Dodge's only driver in The Chase, was part of that on-trace mishap and now ranks 11th in the standings, 157 points out of the lead. |
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DOVER, Del. (Sept. 23, 2007) ¿ Kurt Busch and Ryan Newman were within 14 laps of producing top-five finishes in Sunday's Dodge Dealers 400 at Dover International Speedway when a right-front flat tire sent Busch careening into the backstretch's outside wall, triggering a 10-car melee that also involved Newman.
Busch was running fourth and Newman fifth when the accident occurred. When Busch's Miller Lite Dodge Avenger smacked the outside wall, Newman cut his Alltel Dodge Avenger to the left in an attempt to avoid Busch, but Busch bounced off the wall and into Newman. With the field so tightly packed due to a restart just one lap earlier, the accident collected several top-10 cars, three of whom were hoping to make substantial gains in the Chase for the NEXTEL Cup in addition to Busch.
"I don't know exactly what happened, but we must have had a right-front tire go down and something broke on the right-front suspension," said Busch, who is now 11th in the point standings, trailing leader Jeff Gordon by 151 points with eight races remaining in the title chase. "It's a shame because the day was shaping up to be a great comeback for us in the points."
Most everyone involved in the 12-car Chase for the Championship experienced problems Sunday. Some were mechanical, while others were involved in accidents that caused a track record 13 caution flags for a 400-mile race. The lap 386 accident left Newman with a 28th-place finish and Busch 29th.
"If I would have known it was going to be that big of a mess, I would have just hit him [Busch] and tried to knock him out of the way instead of crossing my car up and blocking the race track," said Newman, who remained 14th in the standings.
Both Penske drivers ran in the top 10 for most of the day. Busch, who started fourth, led once for 20 laps and never ran lower than seventh until lap 290 when he had to make a green-flag pit stop. He was seventh when the stops cycled around about 25 laps later, but he was only a straightaway ahead of the leader.
Newman, who started 24th, immediately began moving towards the front on the tough, 1-mile concrete track. He had cracked the top 15 by lap 60; however, with five caution flags in the first 200 laps, it took him until lap 180 to break into the top 10, where he ran for the majority of the remaining laps until the lap 386 accident.
At one point, both Busch and Newman were a lap down, but Newman received the free pass when the eighth caution period began on lap 356. Busch regained his lost lap when he was the Lucky Dog recipient on the ninth caution period that began on lap 364.
In addition to the 13 caution periods, the race was stopped twice while track workers cleared the high-banked speedway after accidents. The first occurred on lap 370 and consumed 5 minutes 12 seconds, while the second came on lap 386 and lasted 11 minutes 40 seconds.
¿We just have to bite the bullet and go on,¿ Pat Tryson, Busch's crew chief, said. ¿It was a really wild race out there today and you can see how much things can change in just one race. You¿d expect this many cars to have trouble at a place like Talladega, but certainly not here at Dover. There¿s a lot of racing left to do, including the races at Talladega, Martinsville and other wild-card sort of tracks, so you never know what can happen.
¿We¿ll just regroup and be ready again for them at Kansas next weekend.¿
Sunday¿s LifeLock 400 at Kansas Speedway has a scheduled 2 p.m. EDT starting time with coverage by ABC and MRN Radio.
Ryan Newman and his #12 Alltel Dodge team finished a dissappointing 29th in the Dodge Dealers 400 at Dover. Carl Edwards was the winner with a very dominating car.
The good news for Ryan Newman fans is that he had a great run at Dover. He was poised to finish in the top 5 until he got wrapped up in an accident with 18 laps to go involving his teamate Kurt Busch.
Newman has fallen even farther behind Dale Earnhard JR for 13th position. Newman is -170 points behind JR.
This was Newman's 5th DNF of the season. This one can not be blamed on engine failure or anything else except bad luck and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Many of the chase contenders had troubles in todays race including - Kurt Busch - Finished 28th, Matt Kensith - Finished 35th. Driver like Jimmie Johnson struggled all day.
A scary moment during the race was when Art Harris, the gas can man for Michael Waltrip Racing’s No. 55 Nextel Cup car, was struck by a flying tire that was hit on a busy pit road. Harris was reportedly in good condition and was taken to the hospital. His trip to the hospital caused a caution so the ambulance could get out - going acroos the track because there is not tunnel at Dover from the infield to the outside.
Nextel Cup series championship contender Clint Bowyer will join fellow Cup driver Ryan Newman in competing in the Oct. 10 Jani-King Southern Showdown at The Dirt Track @ Lowe's Motor Speedway. The World of Outlaws Late Model Series event kicks off Bank of America 500 Week and features a possible $30,000 first-place prize for the winner of the 50-lap feature. Prior to joining Richard Childress Racing in 2004, Bowyer won numerous races and championships on both dirt and paved short tracks in the Midwest, including the 2002 NASCAR Weekly Racing Series Midwest Region crown. The Jani-King Southern Showdown's unique format rewards the winner according to the number of positions advanced during the main event. The top-three finishers in each of the six heat races advance directly to the main event and they will draw for starting positions. If the driver who wins the 50-lap finale submitted an official entry form prior to Sept. 15, he will receive the $10,000 first-place prize along with an amount equal to $1,000 multiplied by his starting position. Other early entries for the Oct. 10 Jani-King Southern Showdown include Scott Bloomquist, Chub Frank, Jimmy Owens, Steve Francis, Josh Richards, Steve Shaver, Clint Smith, Earl Pearson Jr., Mike Balzano and Ricky Weeks. Tickets are available by calling the Lowe's Motor Speedway ticket office at 1-800-455-FANS.
Ryan Newman (No. 12 Alltel Dodge Avenger)
WHAT HAPPENED OUT THERE? “I know the No. 2 car got high and bounced off the wall. It looked like something broke. He bounced off the wall, came across and if I would have known it was going to be that big of a mess I would have just hit him and tried to knock him out of the way instead of crossing my car up and blocking the race track.
“It was a good run for the alltel Dodge up until that point. We had a great effort for Penske Racing until about twenty to go.”
HOW HARD WAS THE HIT? “It wasn’t that hard of a hit. It was a pretty straight forward hit and the belts take the whole load. It didn’t hurt, really. I was more worried about getting t-boned in the door afterwards which happened, just not a real hard hit.”
HOW FRUSTRATING TO BE INVOLVED IN A WRECK SO CLOSE TO THE FINISH? “It’s unfortunate. Typically it happens at a place like this or this place when you get bunched up like that on a restart; we’ve been racing so hard, car balances change and everybody tries to get two spots instead of one. I’m not sure what happened these last two deals — I know the 17 blew up and I think Kurt broke something. It’s just tough. It’s racing, it’s racing at Dover.
HAD THE RACING GOTTEN SO INTENSE A WRECK WAS ALMOST A FORGONE CONCLUSION? “Yes, it was. But, what happened as far as intense wasn’t what caused the accident. Just in the wrong spot at the wrong time with a good racecar that was capable of a top five.”
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Kurt Busch (No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Avenger)
ON THE ACCIDENT “I just caught the fence in turn two and it collected so many top cars and everybody for that matter. It’s tough when everybody puts a lot of hard work into building these cars and one little problem like that took out a lot of cars.
“It was a nice top five that was developing, we actually had thirty lap fresher tires then anybody and something broke.”
NASCAR drivers Kurt Busch (2), Ryan Newman (12), and Kasey Kahne (9) crash during the NASCAR Dodge Dealers 400 auto race at Dover International Speedway in Dover, Del., on Sunday, Sept., 23, 2007.
