Call it a status quo race for Ryan Newman, who posted another top-10 finish and remained seventh in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup point standings.
Newman, driver of the No. 39 U.S. Army/Haas Automation Chevrolet, posted a 10th-place result in Sunday’s AAA 400 Cup event at Dover International Speedway.
It was the fifth-straight top-10 and the 14th of the season for Newman, who finished eighth in Dover’s June race.
Though he stayed seventh in the standings, Newman lost ground in points and is 110 markers behind leader Mark Martin with eight Chase races remaining.
“We’ve been consistent, but we need to be consistent with better results,” said Newman, who is one of the 12 Chase drivers. “This is a brutally tough competition and we can still do it. We just need to get hotter than we currently are and string together some top fives and get a win or two. It’s all doable, but we need to be up there with the 5 (Mark Martin) and the 48 (Jimmie Johnson). From here on in we need to follow the same kind of mental and emotional toughness that our Army Strong Soldiers possess.”
Newman, who qualified third, bolted to the front early in the race. He took over the lead on Lap 29 of 400 and stayed out front for the next 29 laps. But then handling issues started to creep in, which curtailed Newman’s effort for the remainder of the race at the all-concrete Monster Mile.
“We really struggled getting into the corner, which we didn’t in practice,” said Newman, who ran in the top-10 for virtually the entire race. “We made a couple of changes overnight and I think we hurt ourselves with the U.S. Army Chevrolet Impala SS. What we did to fix the first third hurt the second two-thirds. We did it just to make it so we could survive the race.”
Regarding the car’s handling problems, crew chief Tony Gibson, said, “We took a number of swings at the car’s setup, but really never connected the way we were hoping to. I know top 10s aren’t bad, but we know we’re capable of better finishes. There’s still plenty of racing left.”
Newman’s teammate, Tony Stewart, finished ninth and is fifth in the point standings.
The race winner was Jimmie Johnson. Rounding out the top-five in order were: Mark Martin, Matt Kenseth, Juan Pablo Montoya and Kurt Busch.
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