Ryan Newman
- Height: 5-11
- Weight: 207
- Born: Dec 8, 1977, South Bend, IN
News and Notes
Oct 28
This week: Newman moved up a position in the Chase but at 312 points out he is nothing more than a bit player for the remainder of the season. Newman has no wins, four top-five finishes and seven top-10s in 15 Talladega starts. He was 43rd last fall and third in April and has four top-10 finishes in his last five starts there. "I know they've made one big step, and that's to reduce the restrictor plate size to slow the cars down so we're less likely to get airborne," Newman said. "... Realistically, the drivers, as NASCAR has evolved to restrictor-plate tracks, have changed the way we drive. There will be times when we single-file out, and there will be times when we're four-wide/four-deep for the whole pack at times. So it's just a matter of excitement and strategy and the timing of those things in conjunction with what lap we're on and what there is to expect before the end of the race, because I didn't expect the last race there to be two cars, two groups of two cars pushing each other and may the best two-team win. I never thought that would be a Talladega race. Realistically, you never know what to expect. But I know the restrictor plate change is a big thing."
Last week: Newman had one of his better races in the Chase when he finished seventh.
Etc.: Newman would like to see some changes made to NASCAR's current car. "There's different ways of looking at that," Newman said. "From a mechanical standpoint, there are things we could do to make the car ride different or be able to adjust to it differently. I haven't been a big fan of the bump stops, but they are a way we tune the race car and they are a way we can create advantages. ... Ideally, we'd not like to have bump stops; we'd have four shocks, go off and make it more simple. When you make it more complex, (it) makes the more understanding teams be more successful. So the second part of it is the aerodynamics of the car: I don't know if they're ideal. I'm not a huge fan of the wing. I think that we'd get more side drafting, have a little bit better side-by-side racing, if we had a spoiler on the back of it. I think you'll see a lot of the things we'd ideally have liked to have seen in the Car of Tomorrow for the Cup Series and the Car of Tomorrow for the Nationwide Series in the future based on things that both NASCAR and the teams have learned."
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