It’s odd identifying Ryan Newman with the old guard in NASCAR today. It does not seem that long ago that he and Jimmie Johnson were vying for the 2002 Rookie of the Year award, with Newman fresh off of a stellar limited campaign in 2001. Newman was set to be the top dog for Penske Racing then, with many certain that he’d bring them a Winston Cup championship.
Well, it’s 2017, Winston Cup is now the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, Penske Racing is now Team Penske, and Newman is now a Richard Childress Racing driver who hasn’t been claiming poles or wins like he once did, way back in 2003. But as of March 19, 2017, he’s still proving that he can win and take NASCAR’s young blood to task, as he held off a Kyle Larson (who so happens to be having a stellar stretch in his No. 42) to win the Good Sam 500 at Phoenix Raceway.
Since joining RCR in 2014, Newman has made the playoffs a couple of times (2014, 2015), with his ’14 effort culminating in a narrow championship miss, finishing second to Kevin Harvick in the standings. But he went winless that year, the next year, and the year after in 2016. Although he’s no stranger to Victory Lane with 18 wins under his belt (including the 2008 Daytona 500), his runner-up points finish was only his third top-10 points effort since 2009.
That said, it’s easy to count Newman out in this day and age when compared to a driver like Larson, whose 2017 finishes in four races are 12th, second, second, second (compared to Newman’s 2017 stats of 21st, 35th, 17th, and first). Or a driver like Joey Logano, for that matter, whose 2017 stats are sixth, sixth, sixth, and 31st (a late-race crash at Phoenix negated a pole and 82 laps led).
With a winless drought broken at 127 races, the win is huge for him and crew chief Luke Lambert, who made the call Sunday to stay out on old tires.
“It’s sweet for so many reasons. I said that when I won the Brickyard. I said that when I won at Daytona. This has been the longest drought I’ve ever been in. Even in Phoenix, the runners up suck,” said Newman. “It’s just a hard-fought race, a hard-fought battle, a hard-fought four years. I got to thank Richard and Judy, everybody at RCR, ECR, for not only giving me the opportunity to drive the racecar but giving me a racecar that’s in contention to win a race.”
On that note, when it comes to the old guard, there are few teams that are as old school as RCR. Winless since Phoenix in the Fall of 2013, RCR has been around since 1969. With 106 Cup wins to their credit, Sunday’s win indeed was a step in a direction that the championship organization was more used to.
It’s been a long hard road for both Newman and RCR in the meanwhile, and understandably, many were quick to write them off. They hadn’t won. They weren’t contending and dominating like they once were. With guys like Larson, Logano and Chase Elliott coming along, we’ll be seeing more of them and less of guys like Newman.
Those were arguments that we’ve made throughout Newman’s drought, but if the win yesterday proved anything, it’s that the old guard isn’t ready to move out of the way just yet.
Kevin Harvick scored the victory in the Valley of the Sun, but just by the slimmest of margins.
It took until past halfway through the Good Sam 500 to take over the lead for the first time, but the driver of the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet survived a beating and banging drag race to the finish line coming out of Turn 4 with Carl Edwards to secure the victory. It’s his 32nd career win in the Sprint Cup Series, his eighth at Phoenix International Raceway and the closest margin of any win in the history of the track (0.010 of a second).
“Well, I knew he was better through (Turns) 3 and 4. That was not the car that I wanted to see behind me. I knew I could beat him down there and I tried to protect the bottom in 3 and 4 and I just missed the bottom with all the rubber build-up on the tires and everything. But, all in all, I knew I was going to be on defense down there. I got up too high and wasn’t able to stay on the bottom like I wanted to and then he got into me like he should have, and I needed to get a good run off the corner and I was going to have to get into his door and it worked out, just barely. I just want to thank Jimmy John’s, Busch, Chevrolet, Mobil 1 and everybody at Stewart-Haas for everything that they do.”
“I should’ve wrecked him,” Edwards jokingly said after the race. “No, those guys were doing a great job all day. They hung on with those tires but we were faster so I thought ‘Man, I’ll just move him out of the way and get by.’ I just didn’t move him far enough and then he got up the door and I thought I was trying to time — I thought ‘I think he’s going to beat me.’ So, I tried to sideswipe him before he got there but I needed to be in front of his front tire. Anyway, just a fun race. Man, I wish we could’ve won that thing. Dave Rogers (crew chief) did a great job. I’ve got to thank Stanley. They’re onboard here. Hopefully, everybody that damaged their stuff could use some Stanley Tools to fix it today. ARRIS, Toyota, TRD (Toyota Racing Development), Subway, Comcast, XFINITY, all of our sponsors. I wanted to win that thing but you win some and you lose some. It was a good race.”
Denny Hamlin overcame being penalized for an uncontrolled tire on his first stop to finish third in his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
He said there was “great effort for our whole FedEx Freight Toyota team. Just I thought we had a car that could win. We really did a good job back there – pit crew did a good job down the stretch there. So, overall I’m very proud of our program. We’ve really come a long way on this race track. Obviously, this is a very pivotal race track when it comes to getting to Homestead so we want to run good here and this is a good step.”
Pole-sitter Kyle Busch led 75 laps on his way to finishing fourth in his No. 18 JGR Toyota. Dale Earnhardt Jr. led 34 laps but opted to stay out when the rest of the field pitted and stumbled on the final restart on his way to rounding out the top-five in his No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. got to bet on the final restart and came home fifth. Photo: Christian Petersen/Getty Images
“Yeah, I was surprised we finished as good as we did,” Earnhardt said. “I thought that was a good move to not pit. If a couple more guys don’t pit and we get another guy on the outside in the second row we was in good shape.”
Kurt Busch brought his No. 41 SHR Chevrolet home to a sixth-place finish.
“It was a good run, it wasn’t a great run,” Busch said. “Thanks to all my guys. We tried hard, we worked hard and it’s just a matter of getting that grip later in the day. Kevin Harvick is a master here at Phoenix, congrats to him. We were close. We will keep chipping away at it.”
After three races of bad runs, Matt Kenseth scores his first top-10 finish of the season after bringing his No. 20 JGR Toyota home to a seventh-place finish. Chase Elliott also bounced back from a lousy finish at Las Vegas with an eighth-place finish in his No. 24 HMS Chevrolet.
“I felt like it was a solid day for us,” Elliott said. “I was just happy we finally put a day together and got a finish that these guys deserved. I feel like we had a good car. We made gains on it all day long. That last restart, obviously, was pretty wild. We tried our best. We gave up a couple of spots, but we will take it and move on to Fontana.”
Austin Dillon continues his run of strong performances this season with a ninth-place finish in his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.
“Solid day we ran right there 10th all day,” Dillon said. “At the end Slugger (Labbe, crew chief) made the call to stay out. It was a gutsy call. I think right there at the end the No. 88 kind of spun his tires and didn’t get going. The No. 18 put me three-wide, so glad to come out with ninth after that. We gained a spot overall. We probably could have had, maybe two more spots really, just a fun race. I’m looking forward to this year. That was enjoyable right there.”
Ryan Blaney brought home another top-10 finish in his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford.
“That wasn’t bad,” Blaney said. “We fought really hard all day. We got a lot better throughout the day. We didn’t start out that great and we just got better as we went along. The guys did a great job with two tires at the end and I thought about staying out but we wouldn’t have been on the first two rows, I don’t think, so we had to come in and get two and I think it picked us up one spot. It was a good day and a good job by everybody on this Motorcraft Quick Lane team and a top-10 car is all I could ask for.”
Joey Logano couldn’t make the fuel last to the end. Photo: Sean Gardner/Getty Images
Joey Logano pitted from ninth with seven laps to go and finished in 18th one-lap down.
“We just didn’t quite get the luck on our side today,” Logano said. “We created our own luck as well. We need to clean it up a little bit. We need to clean up the mistakes we have had here at the beginning of the season on everybody’s front. We still have speed. We were close today. At times, it felt like we were a third-place car, and we were running up there around third. We just still have work to do to catch the 4 and 19, they were the class of the field.”
Kasey Kahne had a top-10 run going before suffering a right-front tire blowout and slamming the wall in Turn 3 with six laps remaining.
“We had a right front tire go down,” Kahne said. “It happened earlier in the race but a caution came out and I thought it was the engine at the time because of the way it kind of vibrated and changed the tone of the engine. Come to find out it wasn’t the engine and it was the tire. We’ll look at what we are doing since it happened a couple of times. We had a car capable of running in the top-15 and we were really good early. The longer the race went I felt like I got looser. I used a lot of brake during the entire the race, which I was surprised about. Yesterday in practice I didn’t have to use the brake hardly at all and today with different grips I used it so much.”
Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who’s been showing that Roush Fenway Racing has started to turn the ship around the last three weeks, suffered a right-front tire blowout and slammed the wall in Turn 1 halfway through the race.
“We were really tight and I was having to use too much break and I think we got the tires hot and once we did that the right front gave out from having to use too much brake,” Stenhouse said. “The cars were a handful. They were fun to drive. We just didn’t quite have the Fastenal Ford dialed in like we needed to today. We were really tight, therefore, we had to use too much brake.”
Paul Menard suffered a right-front tire blowout at the lap 105 mark and slammed the wall in Turn 3.
Asked what happened, he said he wasn’t “really sure. We were okay that last run. We fired off pretty decent and started getting really tight at the end. I don’t know if a left-front tire blew or what going into 3. I don’t know if something broke or if a tire blew. We are going to check it out. I’m curious about it.”
Ryan Newman also fell victim to a right-front tire blowout at the lap 53 mark and hit the wall in Turn 3.
“We just blew a right-front tire. It must have melted the bead or something. I don’t know if something failed in the cooling department or what the deal was. I didn’t do anything any different than I’ve ever done here before. Just definitely blew a right-front tire out and that was the end of our day with the Grainger Chevrolet.”
The race lasted two hours, 45 minutes and 53 seconds at an average speed of 113.212 mph. There were seven lead changes among four different drivers and five cautions for 30 laps. The final margin of victory was one one-hundredths of a second.
Kurt Busch topped the chart in the second Sprint Cup Series practice. The driver of the No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet was the fastest in the second practice session with a time of 26.194 and a speed of 137.436 mph.
Kevin Harvick was second in his No. 4 SHR Chevrolet with a time of 26.338 and a speed of 136.685 mph while Carl Edwards was third in his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota with a time of 26.375 and a speed of 136.493 mph. Martin Truex Jr. was fourth in his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota with a time of 26.395 and a speed of 136.389 mph as Chase Elliott rounded out the top-five in his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet with a time of 26.397 and a speed of 136.379 mph.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was sixth in his No. 88 HMS Chevrolet, teammate Kasey Kahne was seventh in his No. 5 Chevrolet and A. J. Allmendinger was eighth in his No. 47 JTG Daugherty Racing Chevrolet. Joey Logano was ninth in his No. 22 Team Penske Ford followed by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. who rounded out the top-10 in his No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford.
Michael Annett’s No. 46 HScott Motorsports Chevrolet slammed the wall hard in Turn 2 during practice after suffering a front-end lockup.
“Definitely got down there and the car just didn’t want to turn,” Annett said. “I don’t know if we were on the splitter or if we cut down a right-front (tire). … I cranked on the wheel and it wouldn’t go straight.”
The damage was so severe that he had to roll out his backup car. Because the change took place after qualifying, he’ll start from the rear of the field in tomorrow’s Good Sam 500.
The Sprint Cup Series cars will be back on track for final practice this afternoon at 1:00.
Kyle Busch will lead the field to the green flag on Sunday in the Valley of the Sun.
The driver of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota scored the pole for the Good Sam 500 with a time of 26.014 and a speed of 138.387 mph. This is the 18th career pole and third at Phoenix International Raceway for the reigning Sprint Cup Series champion.
“We just cooled everything back down to make sure we gave it everything we got,” Busch said. “We just made a couple of fine-tuning adjustments from what we ran before and it was a tick faster, not much, just a tick.”
Carl Edwards will start second in his No. 19 JGR Toyota after posting a time of 26.179 and a speed of 137.515 mph. Denny Hamlin will join his two teammates in third in his No. 11 JGR Toyota after posting a time of 26.196 and a speed of 137.426 mph. Kurt Busch will start fourth in his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet after posting a time of 26.202 and a speed of 137.394 mph.
Jimmie Johnson was to round out the top-five in his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet after posting a time of 26.244 and a speed of 137.174 mph, but he’ll start from the rear of the field on Sunday after his car slammed the wall in Turn 2 as he was making his second lap with two minutes remaining in the final round of qualifying.
“Certainly a lot of straight in an area of the track that I didn’t need to have straight. We’ll have to get to the bottom of it,” Johnson said. “Just a really hard impact to the outside wall. Thankful that we have SAFER barriers and soft walls. But very disappointed because we had such a fast race car.”
After qualifying, Johnson took to Twitter to explain what happened.
Matt Kenseth will start sixth in his No. 20 JGR Toyota followed by Kyle Larson in seventh in his
No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet. Martin Truex Jr. will start eighth in his No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota and Joey Logano starts ninth in his No. 22 Team Penske Ford. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. will round out the top-10 in his No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford.
Jamie McMurray will start 11th in his No. 1 CGR Chevrolet while Ryan Blaney will round out the 12 drivers that made the final round of qualifying.
Kevin Harvick, the odds-on favorite to win this weekend, will start 18th in his No. 4 SHR Chevrolet.
Kasey Kahne posted the third-fastest time in the first round of qualifying, but he will start from the rear of the field on Sunday after changing engines. This is due to an issue with the EFI that caused his car to erupt in smoke. Kahne will join his teammate Johnson at the rear of the field Sunday.
Complete Starting Lineup: (As noted above, Jimmie Johnson and Kasey Kahne will start from the rear of the field in backup cars).
Pack a Kevin Harvick lawn chair, Busch beer, Kevin Harvick swag and head to Kevin Harvick hill…I mean rattlesnake hill because NASCAR is coming to the Valley of the Harvick…I mean Sun.
This week, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series heads to Kevin Harvick Raceway…I mean Phoenix International Raceway in Kevin Harvick, Arizona…I mean Avondale Arizona for the Kevin Harvick 500…I mean Good Sam 500. This 499.2 km (312 mi) feature on the 1.6 km (1 mi) oval is the fourth race of the 2016 season and second of the three-race West Coast Swing.
Opened in 1964, Phoenix has played host to mostly open-wheel racing. In 1988, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series ran its first race at the one-mile oval. Alan Kulwicki scored his first career victory that day. Since then, the deed to the track has practically belonged to one Kevin Michael Harvick.
Photo Credit: Chris Trotman/Getty Images
Let’s stop beating around the bush. We all know that the driver of the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet is the odds-on favorite to win Sunday at 6/1 (Vegas Insider).
He has seven wins, 11 top-fives and 15 top-10s in 26 starts.
In those seven wins, he led 10, 252, 15, 70, 224, 264 and 224 laps. That’s a mean average of just over 151 laps.
This means he doesn’t just win at Phoenix, he flat out dominates. Even in the rain-shortened race last November where he finished runner-up, he lead 143 of the 219 laps.
I expect more of the same this Sunday with Harvick taking the lead early and never letting go until he takes the checkered flag.
Photo Credit: Robert Laberge/NASCAR via Getty Images
If by some chance Harvick isn’t the driver to beat on Sunday and he is, the next driver to watch would be Jimmie Kenneth Johnson.
Now the driver of the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet hasn’t been too shabby when it comes to Phoenix. In fact, his 7.7 average finish tops the 10.6 of Harvick. He’s also finished in the top-five and top-10 more than Harvick.
From late 2007 to the end of 2009, Johnson owned the deed to the track. Since the changeover from the COT to the Gen-6, his record at the track has been…marginal at best. In the last six races, he’s led just 46 laps total. He’s been rather consistent with an average finish of 11th.
So while I can expect a good run from Johnson, I doubt he’ll have anything to prevent Harvick from winning.
Photo Credit: Christian Petersen/Getty Images
I would say the driver with the best chance to unseat Harvick as the ruler of Phoenix is one Joseph Thomas Logano.
Since making the jump to Team Penske, the driver of the No. 22 Ford has had an average finish of 9.3 which also bests Harvick’s average.
The key for Logano to win Sunday will be simply this; Keep Harvick Behind! The only chance he, and everyone else by extension, has of winning Sunday is if they keep the No. 4 as far away from the lead as possible. If he can, he’s the best non-Harvick choice for scoring the victory on Sunday.
Tune in this Sunday to see who takes home the trophy. Coverage of the Good Sam 500 begins Sunday at 3 p.m. on FOX. If you can’t watch, tune into the radio broadcast on MRN and/or SiriusXM (subscription required for the latter).
