Ryan Newman in familiar position as he tries to turn around his struggling Stewart-Haas Racing team
Ryan Newman rallied from a slow start last year to make the Chase. // Jeff Robinson, NASCAR Illustrated
Ryan Newman sits 32nd in the Sprint Cup Series standings, but the Stewart-Haas Racing driver says this isn’t the time to panic or try to figure out a comeback strategy.
After all, it’s just three races into the season and there are 23 races remaining before he Chase For The Sprint Cup field is set. And Newman was in a similar position last year, when his Stewart-Haas Racing team made a quick comeback.
Newman is pleased with how his Stewart-Haas Racing car has ran, but he got caught up in a wreck at Daytona and then blew an engine at Auto Club Speedway in California. He finished 18th last week at Las Vegas.
“It’s real early to be talking about a comeback,” said Newman, who is 150 points out of 12th in the standings. “ Based on the numbers, I guess you could call it that. We’ve got ourselves in a hole. … We’ve got some work to do to get ourselves in position. We’ve got a long time before that issue becomes pressing.
“So I feel confident that we’ve made some big gains with our race cars this year. Vegas, we actually were off a little bit. But California we had a really fast race car and lost an engine.”
Newman had only one DNF last season, and he already has two this year. He heads to Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he has seven of his 45 career poles, thinking he can run fast, lead laps and finish well.
“I’ve always enjoyed Atlanta on Fridays just because of my record in the cars that I’ve been given at those types of race tracks, especially there,” Newman said. “But I wouldn’t say that I think of Atlanta as a place that we are going to rebound or we can rebound.
“Every race track or every day is a new opportunity. It’s up to our team to go out there and make that happen.”
Comebacks are nothing new for Newman. Last year, he was 33rd in points after three races and found himself in the top 12 seven races later.
“We rebounded pretty quick last year,” said Newman, who finished ninth in the standings last year. “There’s plenty of potential and there’s a lot of season left. The law of averages works out for everybody except for Jimmie Johnson. We’ll have our opportunities.
“But I think if you look at 2009, when we rebounded, we didn’t keep that performance going. We had, I think, four … top-fives in a row, then we fell off. We maintained an 8th- to 10th-place position [in points] for the next 10 races or so, which was not ideal. We left ourselves a lot of room to get better, which is a good thing, even though we made the Chase.
“If we can improve upon last year, then talking about [our points situation] at this time won’t be an issue for the rest of the season.”
