Hey… Who Said Newman Was Out of the Chase?
I’ve already stated my belief the Chase is down to three players, but credit is due Ryan Newman for a stellar performace in qualifing for Saturday night’s UAW-GM 500. Newman lost ownership of the track record at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in May. Thursday night, he regained the record with a lap at 188.877 mph.
Newman’s lap, which took just 28.590 seconds, beat the mark of 28.869 seconds (187.052 mph) that Jimmie Johnson had set in May when Johnson beat Newman to win the pole for the Coca-Cola 600.
“That was pretty close to a perfect lap,” Newman said after winning his sixth pole of the season and the 24th of his career. “I told Krissie (Newman’s wife) I wanted the record back, and we got great weather and a good lap.”
Rookie Kasey Kahne ran 187.311 mph, also faster than the previous record, but it was only good enough for the outside spot on Row 1 since it was more than a quarter of a second slower than Newman ran.
“I watched his lap and it looked completely perfect,” Kahne said of Newman. “My lap felt really fast, but I didn’t think I ran the perfect line. Ryan missed all of the bumps and put down a cool lap.”
Casey Mears, who’d won the pole for tonight’s SpongeBob 300 race in the NASCAR Busch Series earlier in the evening, was the early leader in Cup qualifying too after running 187.279 mph as Dodge swept the top three positions.
“I wasn’t surprised at how fast Ryan went,” Mears said. “When they told me what I ran, knowing what Ryan had run in practice in the heat of the day, I didn’t think that was going to be good enough.”
Scott Riggs, another rookie, qualified fourth fastest in his Chevrolet.
