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Sprint Cup
CUP: SHR Drivers Change Directions
Ryan Newman had his best finish of the year Monday...
Ryan Newman (Left) finished fourth while Tony Stewart (Right) came home 26 in Martinsville Monday. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Through the first five races of the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup season, Tony Stewart enjoyed solid and productive results, while his Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Ryan Newman mostly struggled.
Monday at Martinsville Speedway, the two saw their respective roles essentially reversed. Newman, who was fast all weekend at the 0.525-mile paperclip, earned his first top-five finish of the year with an excellent fourth-place run in Monday’s rain-delayed Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500. It was Newman’s third consecutive top-10 at Martinsville and his sixth-top five in 17 career Sprint Cup starts here.
Stewart, meanwhile, fought handling demons for most of the race, limping home with an extremely disappointing 26th-place finish.
Crew chief Tony Gibson kept Newman on the track following a caution period at lap 493, which moved the No. 39 Chevrolet from fifth-place to third on the restart at lap 497. Newman quickly passed Matt Kenseth and settled into the runner-up spot behind Jeff Gordon. However, the caution flag flew at lap 500, setting up a green-white-checkered finish.
On the final restart, Newman got shuffled out of the groove and lost two positions. Still, the Indiana native was pleased to finish where he did.
“It was just a great run for the Haas Automation Chevrolet,” Newman said. “We needed a top-five as a team. The guys did a good job in the pits all day. I was just unlucky on the outside there on the last restart. To get a top-four out of that and on older tires, I can’t complain. ... We’ve been trying to make improvements over last year. We were sixth here in the spring last year, and this year we were fourth. It was a good points day for us, which is obviously important to us. It was a much needed top-five for our team.”
Stewart’s story was a little more problematic. For the first 65 laps, Stewart had one of the fastest cars on the track and appeared poised to win his third Martinsville race. But then the handling went away and his team never could get it back.
Despite myriad track bar, wedge, shock, tire pressure and toe angle adjustments, crew chief Darian Grubb and his squad couldn’t get the No. 14 Chevy running well again.
“The first 40 laps, we were the fastest car out there and got up to second,” Grubb said. “After that, I don’t have a clue what happened. We tried to make changes to make the car turn better and everything we did made the car tighter. We started undoing all of our adjustments and we got it a little better, but by that time we had already lost track position and were losing laps. I’ve never made that many adjustments on a race car, so we were obviously way, way off.”
Stewart is now eighth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup points standings, while Newman gained four positions to climb to 22nd. The Cup Series will enjoy a rare off-weekend this week before traveling west for races in Phoenix and Texas.
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.
Monday at Martinsville Speedway, the two saw their respective roles essentially reversed. Newman, who was fast all weekend at the 0.525-mile paperclip, earned his first top-five finish of the year with an excellent fourth-place run in Monday’s rain-delayed Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500. It was Newman’s third consecutive top-10 at Martinsville and his sixth-top five in 17 career Sprint Cup starts here.
Stewart, meanwhile, fought handling demons for most of the race, limping home with an extremely disappointing 26th-place finish.
Crew chief Tony Gibson kept Newman on the track following a caution period at lap 493, which moved the No. 39 Chevrolet from fifth-place to third on the restart at lap 497. Newman quickly passed Matt Kenseth and settled into the runner-up spot behind Jeff Gordon. However, the caution flag flew at lap 500, setting up a green-white-checkered finish.
On the final restart, Newman got shuffled out of the groove and lost two positions. Still, the Indiana native was pleased to finish where he did.
“It was just a great run for the Haas Automation Chevrolet,” Newman said. “We needed a top-five as a team. The guys did a good job in the pits all day. I was just unlucky on the outside there on the last restart. To get a top-four out of that and on older tires, I can’t complain. ... We’ve been trying to make improvements over last year. We were sixth here in the spring last year, and this year we were fourth. It was a good points day for us, which is obviously important to us. It was a much needed top-five for our team.”
Stewart’s story was a little more problematic. For the first 65 laps, Stewart had one of the fastest cars on the track and appeared poised to win his third Martinsville race. But then the handling went away and his team never could get it back.
Despite myriad track bar, wedge, shock, tire pressure and toe angle adjustments, crew chief Darian Grubb and his squad couldn’t get the No. 14 Chevy running well again.
“The first 40 laps, we were the fastest car out there and got up to second,” Grubb said. “After that, I don’t have a clue what happened. We tried to make changes to make the car turn better and everything we did made the car tighter. We started undoing all of our adjustments and we got it a little better, but by that time we had already lost track position and were losing laps. I’ve never made that many adjustments on a race car, so we were obviously way, way off.”
Stewart is now eighth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup points standings, while Newman gained four positions to climb to 22nd. The Cup Series will enjoy a rare off-weekend this week before traveling west for races in Phoenix and Texas.
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.
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