Ryan Newman News and Information

By Mike Pratt
http://ryannewmaninfo.info

Ok, well I did not have a volunteer for the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway for my new A Fans View. I’m happy to report that I am getting volunteers for future races though. The earliest one so far is for the Martinsville race. I have also had people contact me about Lowe’s, Dover and Richmond. So I am excited about that.

Granted these are not in stone, but I figure if I have been contacted about it, then they are interested in doing it.

And of course I am hoping to bring you the fan’s pictures as well if they have any!

For this A Fans View section, I hope to post A Fans View on Tuesday. A lot of that depends on how fast the people that have volunteered can get me their write up. But Tuesday’s seem like a pretty good day to me. And of course their articles will hopefully stay up for a whole day, but if I come across some new Ryan Newman news, I will more than likely post it. Although, depending on the news, it could be postponed a day.

I will give you my take on the Atlanta race. I have read a lot of articles and message board postings around the internet and the consensus is that the Atlanta race was boring. I think in general that I have to agree. It was a pretty boring race although there were parts of it that I found “interesting”.

Dale Earnhardt JR jumped to the lead so fast and was catching lap traffic by lap 25 I think it was. I thought for sure he was going to get a win. But as in all races, other teams make adjustments, drivers get themselves positioned, drivers wreck / get damaged (Ryan Newman for example) and by the end of the race you have something completely different.

And to be honest for the most part I would rather watch a boring NASCAR Sprint Cup race than watch no race at all. Granted, if every race was “boring” then viewers would definitely start dropping off. I for one probably would not, but others would.

And while watching the race on Sunday I was also dialed into NASCAR.com’s Race View. I like listening to the radio communications going on. Granted a lot of the time all you here is “clear clear clear” or “NOT CLEAR LOW” or something along those line. But you do end up getting a lot more team information than you normally would by watching the race on TV.

So, boring? Maybe, but it is also how you look at it. I also like FOX’s coverage. And I am always learning something by watching the coverage. Now if that race would have been on ESPN or ABC I would have really been hating it. Sorry, I just can not stand their coverage. At least last years, we will see what it is like this year.

Now I want to say some stuff about this site.

Actually before I do that, I want to say something about the Ryan Newman Foundation. I tried contacting them about a week and a half ago. I posted a message to them through their website. Maybe I am being impatient, but I have not heard anything back from them yet. All I am looking for is a YES or NO.

Here is what I proposed to them. I want to hold a fund raiser for the Ryan Newman Foundation. I would like to do something where people pledge XX amount of dollars (or cents) per lap that Ryan Newman leads in the month of XXXXX with the option of a minimum amount (in case he did not lead any laps or very many laps). This would be pledges only and I WOULD NOT HANDLE ANY OF THE MONEY. I would only handle and keep track of the pledges on this website. I would want to display the names of the people that made pledges.

When it came time to pay, I would like for the people that made pledges to go to the Ryan Newman Foundation website and pay what they “owe” or how ever much they want.

In a perfect world, I would like for them to have a way of keeping track of how much total money was collected from my little fund raiser. And yes I would like for this site to get a little credit, but it does not even have to come from them. I would just like to be able to say, “Hey, this website raised $25 (I would hope it would be more than that!!!) for the Ryan Newman Foundation in our 1st annual FUND RAISER NAME”.

Well, I have not heard anything back from them yet and I am beginning to think that I won’t. If this sounds like a good idea to you, then let them know. Thank you!!

Ok, now onto this website stuff -

This site was not showing properly in Mozilla’s Firefox. It was really bugging me. Most of the viewers of this site use IE, but there is a pretty good percentage that use Firefox. It does not show 100% percent like it does in Internet Explorer, but I sat down tonight and did some research and I have it pretty close. I hope to have it 100% sometimes soon.

Also as you can tell I have changed the background. I was getting pretty bored with the plain blue’s that were displayed here. So hopefully this “jazzes” it up a bit.

If you do the MySpace thing, Jeni and I have been having a blast making some MySpace graphics. To much fun really. Anyway, check out the Web “Stuff” / Myspace page for some contact tables, extended network banners, backgrounds and layouts. We have mostly worked with just contact tables for now, but there are a couple in each of the other categories. I assume during this week we will get some more backgrounds and extended network banners done.

What else……oh yeah, I am really excited that this site is approaching 100 registered users. I know this is small potatoes compared to a lot of other sites, but still it is kind of exciting for Jeni and I. And lets face it, registering gets you absolutely nothing except for letting me display the number of registered users.

Well that is not completely true. Registered users can participate in the polls. If your logged in then you don’t have to verify your comments. But, generally there really is no motivation for people to sign up. So reaching 100 will be cool.