Ryan Newman
No. 12 Mobil 1 Dodge Charger
Bass Pro Shops 500 Advance
Notes of Interest: Newman will not only run the Bass Pro Shops 500 on Sunday, but he will also participate in the season-ending IROC race on Saturday. The fourth race of the year will begin at 3:10 p.m. Also this week, Newman will run in the PRA Silver Crown event at South Georgia Motorsports Park on Wednesday night. Gates open at 4 p.m. Activities begin at 6 p.m.
NNCS Notes:
Ryan Newman, driver of the No. 12 Mobil 1 Dodge Charger, will make his 10th NASCAR Cup Series start at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday and his 185th in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Newman has never started a race at the 1.54-mile track outside the top 10 and only one of his starts has come from outside the top five – a sixth-place start in October 2002. Newman has won six straight Bud Pole Awards, a feat which no other driver in NASCAR history has accomplished at the Georgia track. He swept the award in 2003, 2004 and 2005. Newman’s other two starts at the track have been from the second position; he possesses the longest current streak of nine consecutive top-10 starts. Of the 514 drivers who have competed at AMS since it opened in 1960, Newman has the best starting average of any of them – 1.78.
Newman’s finishes haven’t been quite as strong at the intermediate track. In nine starts, he’s finished inside the top 10 four times, including one top-five finish. Newman has three finishes outside the top 20 and the final three have been in the teens. Newman’s average finish at the track is 18.67.
Newman has led a lap in every Cup event he’s run at AMS, giving him a total of 159 laps led in nine races. He has had only one DNF at the track and has completed 2,837 laps of a possible 2,848. Newman has a completion rate of 99.6 percent.
Crew chief Matt Borland and the No. 12 Mobil 1 Dodge Charger team will take chassis PRS-46 to this weekend’s Bass Pro Shops 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. This car was run once in 2006 at the NASCAR All-Star Challenge in May at Lowe’s Motor Speedway where Newman finished fifth. The car was used in four races last year: the Coca-Cola 600 at LMS; the Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway; the MBNA RacePoints 400 at Dover International Speedway; and the Banquet 400 at Kansas Speedway. In all of those races, except Kansas, Newman finished fifth. He placed 23rd at Kansas.
The backup car for Atlanta is chassis PRS-76. This car was last run at Charlotte two weeks ago. After a rear-end housing cracked, Newman finished 27th. At Chicagoland in July, Newman started 12th and ended up 36th. Before that, Newman drove the car three previous times this season, most recently at Michigan. Newman used this same chassis at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in the Coca-Cola 600, where he finished 35th after starting 18th, and at Darlington in May, where he placed sixth after starting second. Newman also tested this car at Lowe’s Motor Speedway on May 3. Last year, Newman raced this car at Chicagoland Speedway. Prior to the 2005 Chicago race, the car was used in May at Darlington and at Charlotte, and in June at Michigan. The car qualified on the front row in each of the four 2005 races, winning two poles - one at Charlotte and the other at Michigan.
Newman on Atlanta Motor Speedway: “This is another one of those tracks where we’ve always been able to qualify well, but we haven’t been able to make it stick through the entire race. We’ve struggled so much on the intermediate tracks this year and we’d like to just find out what is going on before the year is over to get ready for next year. We run a lot of races on the mile-and-a-half tracks and we’d like to go into the 2007 season feeling like we can run well and win a few races at this type of track. Three of our four remaining races are intermediate tracks, so we’ve got three chances to figure out what our problem has been before next year.”
Quick Stats:
Atlanta Motor Speedway: 9
Races Led/Laps Led: 9/159
Best Starting Position: 1 (six times)
Best Finishing Position: 5 (March 2004)
October 2005 Start: 1
October 2005 Finish: 23
