RICHMOND, Va.: Since sneaking into the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, many thought that Ryan Newman and Roush Fenway Racing wouldn’t do much in to carry the No. 6 Ford Mustang through the opening rounds, but they thought wrong.
Fresh off a top-10 finish last Sunday at Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway, Newman and his Scott Graves led team came to play during Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond (Va.) Raceway, earning a solid fifth-place finish and a solid buffer heading into the cutoff race at the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway ROVAL on Sept. 29.
Newman had finished sixth but when fourth-place competitor Erik Jones was disqualified in post-race inspection, they advanced to earn their second top-five finish of 2019.
Despite starting 19th, Newman began picking off one position at a time and took 16th at the end of Stage 1, but as the second race in the NASCAR Playoffs began to unfold, Ryan “Rocketman” Newman came alive even though he battled a loose race car in his No. 6 Ford Performance Ford Mustang, he hustled to finish stage 2 in sixth.
With Graves making adjustments for the run to the finish, immediately from the drop of the green flag to start Stage 3, Newman continued to move forward and had muscled inside the top-five and then raised eyebrows by passing Kyle Busch at Lap 260 to take third.
While the handling changed on his race car in the closing laps – Newman slid from third to sixth over the final 140 laps to earn his best finish since earning a fifth at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway in July, but more importantly sit a comfortable ninth in the Playoff standings, 11 points ahead of the cutoff spot heading to the Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway ROVAL.
“It was just a good team effort, good pit stops,” said Newman after the race. “The strategy wasn’t a whole lot to it, just put four tires on, but had a good short-run car. One time we had a good long-run car, but we could never get both.
“I think that if we would have had both we could have ran with those guys, but we were at our best probably when we were just hold good bias to a long-run car, but who would have known there were gonna be that many green flag runs.”
Even though Newman scored his 11th top-10 of the season, scored four stage points and earned 36 points overall during Saturday night’s race, the South Bend, Ind. driver said he would have rather won the race. Newman hasn’t been in Victory Lane since the spring race at ISM (Ariz.) Raceway in March 2017 driving for Richard Childress Racing.
“I would have much rather won,” Newman quipped.
While a fifth-place finish isn’t a win, the performance by the Roush Fenway Racing team certainly made it feel like a winning moment and Newman didn’t disagree.
“The best team performance all-around throughout the entire weekend. We failed at qualifying. We got the car too tight, but, overall, just a great team effort to get the Roush Performance Ford a good run. What meant to me the most probably was just being better than we were the first race.
“We ran ninth in the first race and qualified 30th or something like that and we came back and showed that we were learning and we’ll keep learning.”
As for next weekend’s cut-off race, Newman said he wasn’t necessarily looking forward to the ROVAL, but a good effort by the Concord, N.C.-based team will allow the team to advance to the Round of 12 with stops at Dover, Talladega and Kansas.
“I don’t know that I’m looking forward to the Roval, I don’t really know anybody that actually is, except for maybe Truex.”
Newman finished 11th in the Bank of America ROVAL 400 last October.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
