Ryan Newman/Atlanta Cup Advance
Notes:
Ryan Newman, driver of the No. 12 Alltel Dodge, will make his ninth Atlanta Motor Speedway start and his 156th NASCAR Cup Series start this Sunday.
Newman leads all active drivers with six AMS poles, all of them coming in the past six races at the track. Buddy Baker, Newman's mentor and coach, has a record seven AMS poles.
In his eight appearances at AMS, Newman has qualified on the front row for seven of them. In October 2002, qualifying was canceled due to rain, placing Newman sixth on the starting grid.
The current record for consecutive poles is held by David Pearson, who earned 11 straight pole positions at Lowe's Motor Speedway from 1973-1978.
Newman's average AMS start of 1.75 leads all drivers.
Newman has earned four top-10 AMS finishes. He scored three-straight 10th-place finishes in his first three AMS starts.
Newman has led at least one lap in each of his eight AMS starts for a total of 157 laps.
Matt Borland, crew chief of the No. 12 Alltel Dodge, and the Alltel team will race chassis PRS-79 in the Golden Corral 500 on Sunday. PRS-79 earned the pole and finished 22nd at AMS last October. PRS-79 also qualified second and finished seventh at Lowe's Motor Speedway last October.
The Alltel team tested at Kentucky Speedway on Tuesday, March 14.
Newman will be competing in his second NASCAR Busch Series race of the 2006 season this Saturday in the Nicorette 300 at AMS.
Quotes:
Ryan Newman on Atlanta: "The Alltel team, of course, loves qualifying at Atlanta. We get asked a lot why we can't turn the poles into wins, and I always say that it's a lot easier to perfect a single lap than it is to perfect about 300 of them. There are just so many factors that come into play throughout a race. What the Alltel team is working on is how to bounce back from all of those factors and put together 300 or so great laps and get our first win of the 2006 season under our belts."
Matt Borland on rebounding from Las Vegas: "We're fortunate to have a great group of people on our team that have been with us for a long time. They all realize the ups and downs of the racing season. Unfortunately, you're going to have those weeks where you just flat miss it and things go wrong. That's what we had this week in Vegas. Unfortunately we had an engine failure in practice. The guys did a tremendous job changing the engine. We had it completely done in 48 minutes and managed to get a few laps in at the end of the session. It seems like those situations are the ones you build on. We all pulled together and a crew member from the 2 car came over to help us. When things are bad, you have to look at things like that that are real positives, know that you have a strong team and learn the best you can from what went wrong and apply that to what you can do better next week."
For more quotes from Matt Borland, listen to the Alltel Racing podcast on www.alltelracing.com.
Quick Stats:
Atlanta Motor Speedway Starts: 8
Races Led/Laps Led: 8/157
Best Starting Position: 1 (Six Times)
Best Finishing Position: 5 (March 2004)
March 2005 Start: 1
March 2005 Finish: 14
Appearances:
Go-Karting with Boys and Girls Club of Tampa, Florida. Celebration Station (10230 Palm River Road in Tampa) at 4 p.m., ET. Newman will be available for interviews following the event.
