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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Newman Ready For Second Round
Ryan Newman had a stellar first season with Stewart-Haas Racing...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted January 16, 2010   Charlotte, NC
Ryan Newman has the lone win for Stewart-Haas Racing this season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
In his first year teamed with Tony Stewart (Right) at Stewart-Haas Racing, Ryan Newman (Left) made the field for the NASCAR Chase For The Sprint Cup. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Ryan Newman had a very strong first season with Stewart-Haas Racing in 2009 and is looking to improve upon it in his second go-round with the organization.

Certainly, the 2008 Daytona 500 winner and former Purdue University engineering graduate can look at his situation in a couple of different ways.

On one hand, by placing both Newman’s No. 39 Chevrolet Impala SS and Tony Stewart’s No. 14 in the Chase for the Sprint Cup last year, SHR clearly exceeded any reasonable expectations for a first-year team in 2009.

On the other hand, Newman knows there’s plenty of room for improvement in 2010.

Yes, Newman made the Chase in 2009 and in one fabulous six-race stretch from the spring Talladega race to the first Pocono event, he posted five top-five finishes and no finish worse than eighth.

Yet after that Pocono race in June, Newman never again finished in the top five, a string of 22 consecutive races. With engines and chassis purchased from Hendrick Motorsports, SHR has the mechanical tools in place to run well. Now, the goal is to build on what the team began last season.

“One of the things that I've personally made a challenge for myself is to make sure that we improve, because in so many people's eyes we weren't supposed to do what we did last year,” said Newman during an appearance Friday at NASCAR’s Preseason Thunder fan event in Daytona Beach. “From a team standpoint, from a performance standpoint, it's important that we move forward and progress.”

Newman said he had a pretty good idea of what the team needs to do to reach victory lane and go from a consistently good team to one of the elite ones, like four-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson.

“How we do that is honestly a people thing,” said Newman, who has 13 victories and 45 poles in 296 career Sprint Cup starts. “It's teamwork. It's building better race cars, communicating, all those things that the 48 team (Johnson) has done for the last four years straight. We've got a lot of work ahead of us to get to that point, but I think that our organization has done a lot of great things in the off-season for our people and for our race cars to be stronger, and we'll prove that. We'll try to prove that.”

Having a year under his belt with the team should be a big help to Newman this season.

“Knowing names when you walk into a room makes a world of difference than when you walk in not having a clue what to expect or whose voice is going to sound like what or who you should laugh with or what you should laugh at,” said Newman. “It makes a big difference a year later walking into Stewart-Haas Racing, and knowing my group of guys, knowing Tony's group of guys and the shop people and things like that, I kind of have an idea how things are supposed to go and how things are going to go and how we've progressed as a team personally and professionally.”

Of course, one of things Newman is most looking forward to about 2010 is kicking the season off with the Daytona 500, a race he won with a last-lap push from his then-Penske Racing teammate Kurt Busch.

One of things Newman most likes about the 500 is its sheer unpredictability.

“You honestly never know what's going to happen,” said Newman. “ … It's a great racetrack. I enjoy it. I think that Daytona is entirely different from Talladega in respect to how you drive it, how you race it, and obviously the glory that comes along with it. But I really look forward to this year's Daytona 500.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED, and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com! Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to

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