Ryan Newman has Stewart-Haas on the right track

By ANTHONY ANDRO

Lost in the wave of the success Tony Stewart has had in his first year as a driver-owner has been the other Stewart-Haas driver.

Ryan Newman hasn’t garnered the same attention as his new boss or won a race while driving the No. 39 U.S. Army Chevrolet, but he has quietly put together an outstanding season.

Newman heads into Sunday’s AMP Energy 500 at Talladega seventh in the points. He made the Chase, which is the first time he’s been a postseason competitor since 2005.

And while he won’t win his first Sprint Cup championship this year, he’s certainly put the pieces in place for what he hopes is a title run with his new team in the future.

"The one thing that I would say for sure is I feel like we should be able to expand upon this season and take the relationships that we’ve built and start building better and faster race cars and things like that," Newman said during the weekly NASCAR teleconference.

After standing 27th in points five races into the season, Newman found the consistency that eluded him in his career with Penske Racing. He had a string of five top-five finishes in six races at one point and has started on the pole twice, including last weekend in Martinsville.

He’s already had a total of 15 top-10 finishes this year.

It’s not a bad way for a season to go for a driver who finished 17th in points in 2008, 13th in 2007 and 18th in 2006.

He’s already looking toward 2010, when the analytical Newman will have a year under his belt with his team and crew chief Tony Gibson.

"Just being able to sharpen our pencil, per se, and shine things up a little bit, put a little polish on them and just be better than we are in all respects, from the pit crew side, from the team side, mechanically and performance wise, what we can do to be better, we should be able to capitalize on that, what we experienced in 2009 to 2010," he said.

While Newman is eager to get to 2010, he still has four races left this year and has a chance to get a victory. He has never won at Talladega but has run well at NASCAR’s most unpredictable track. In 15 starts, he has four top-five finishes and seven top-10s.

He’s one of the few drivers looking forward to Sunday’s race, which is almost certain to include plenty of tightly packed racing and at least one huge accident. NASCAR has taken strides to change the racing at Talladega by reducing the size of the restrictor plates and raising the catch fence in an attempt to avoid a car flying into the stands as Carl Edwards’ vehicle nearly did in April.

"Realistically, you never know what to expect," he said. "As NASCAR has evolved, you never know what you’re going to get with the drivers and how their styles change."

Who’s hot

Timothy Peters: He’s not going to win the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, but the Red Horse Racing driver is closing the season on a strong note. Peters notched his first career victory Saturday at Martinsville Speedway. It was his second consecutive top five and moved him up to seventh in points. It’s the highest Peters has been in the standings since the second race of the season.

Looking for comments?