Ryan Newman News and Information

Ryan Newman and his new #39 Tornados Impala qualified 3rd for Sunday’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

This will be Newman’s first race with the Tornados sponsor.

Earlier in the day Ryan Newman was the 6th fastest in practice.

SEE RYAN NEWMAN’s PAST PERFORMANCE AT LAS VEGAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY

Las Vegas Motor Speedway Track Page – You’ll see that the 3rd starting position at Las Vegas has the 3rd highest average finishing position. Important? Who knows!

Shelby American At Las Vegas Motor Speedway Line Up

Newman and 17 other drivers broke the tracks previous record including pole sitter Kurt Busch.

THERE WERE LOTS OF RECORD-BREAKING LAPS OUT THERE TODAY
“Yes there were.”

WHY? WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THAT?
“Well, they’ve got new tires and we’ve worked on our race cars and the track was cool. I thought it was pretty good that for whatever reason Mother Nature keeps following us in the form of rain and it seems like it’s been it’s been cool for qualifying for almost every time, including Daytona; but the conditions have stayed the same throughout the entire practice session. It cooled off a little bit, don’t get me wrong, but if it had been sunny it would have been a bigger difference depending on where you drew.”

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE PERSONALLY TO TRY TO BUMP UP THE MOOD IN THE NO. 39 HAULER GIVEN THE FIRST COUPLE OF WEEKS THAT YOU’VE HAD THIS SEASON?
“Nothing. I mean really, I go in and have a good attitude and everybody else has a good attitude and knowing what happened to us was poor luck, I mean, at Daytona we got crashed and we lost an engine there at California. So, it’s tough. And we know where we were at this time last year and it’s about the same spot. And we’ve run a lot better than we did last year. It’s only two races, but either way. It kind of gives you an idea. Our biggest satisfaction was at California knowing that we had a car that was a top five race car. We worked our way towards the front every run and lost that engine. But that in itself has kept us from having to worry about attitude or that mentality of what are we going to do?”

HOW CONFIDENT ARE YOU IN YOUR CAR FOR SUNDAY AND HOW DO YOU THINK YOU’LL RUN?
“I’m very confident. It’s a brand new race car. The Tornados Chevrolet. It’s the first race for them. We’ve made some pretty big gains as an organization and some pretty big gains for me personally working with Tony Gibson and having a year under our belts and having that notebook to go back on when we got some experience here last year. You only get to come to places like here and Kansas and Indy one time each year. So you’ve got to be on your game. When you have nothing to go off of, it’s 200 percent more difficult. So to come here and have the experience of qualifying good last year and then proving that for this year I think that we’ve looked on some good things. I’m just happy to debut the Tornados Chevrolet in a good position in the media center.”

While Ryan Newman embarks on his 299th career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend, the seasoned veteran will also celebrate an important first for his No. 39 Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) team.

Sunday’s Shelby American will be the first of nine races where new sponsor Tornados, a brand of family owned Ruiz Foods, will adorn the No. 39 Chevrolet Impala as the team’s primary sponsor.

Teaming up with Newman and SHR was a leap – a bold move, one could say – for the Dinuba, Calif.-based company. Tornados, a bold-tasting snack featuring meat, cheese and sauce rolled into a crispy crust, was already popular in convenience stores nationwide. Ruiz Foods was now prepared to launch Tornados into retail grocery stores. The company wanted a big idea to bring attention to its product. For a brand with the tagline “Bold is how we roll,” the bigger the idea, the better.

The company’s big idea was to sponsor a Sprint Cup team, and it didn’t take long to turn that idea into reality. The brand joined forces with SHR and announced the venture last November. The partnership begins in earnest this weekend, when Newman and the No. 39 Tornados Chevrolet take the track for the first time at the 1.5-mile Las Vegas oval.

Ryan Newman At Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Starts	Poles	Wins	Top 5	Top 10	Led	AVG ST	AVG FN	DNF
9	1	0	1	4	98	13.00	18.89	1
Stats By Racing News Digest

In nine Sprint Cup starts at Las Vegas, Newman has one pole (2005), one top-five and four top-10 finishes. His best finish at the Nevada track is a fourth-place effort during his rookie season in 2002, when Newman started on the outside pole and led the field for 50 laps. Last season at Las Vegas, Newman was making a hard charge for the top-10 when a vibration, which turned out to be a loose wheel, forced him to pit under green. Newman lost two laps and was had to settle for a 25th-place finish.

In his sophomore campaign with SHR, Newman’s goals are to improve on last season’s performances – to score poles, to win races and to make the Chase for the Championship for a second consecutive season. Although the first two race finishes of 2010 have been less than desirable – a 34th-place finish at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway due to a late-race wreck, and a 36th-place finish at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., due to engine failure – Newman and his No. 39 team have been solid competitors in each race and have shown improved performances on the track.

This weekend is no different. With new sponsor Tornados on board for its first race, Newman is ready for his team’s improved performances on the racetrack to translate into a solid finish. Newman would also like to make it a memorable one.

The first outing on the No. 39 Tornados Chevrolet could well result in several firsts for Newman and the team – his first career win at Las Vegas, his first win at SHR, and the first win ever for any car wearing the No. 39 in Sprint Cup competition.

Taking the checkered flag first and rolling into victory lane at Las Vegas for the first time would be quite an opening act for Newman and his No. 39 Tornados Chevrolet. It may seem like a lofty goal, but this isn’t Newman & Company’s first race together, and they’re more than ready to make a bold statement.

RYAN NEWMAN, Driver of the No. 39 Tornados Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing

Las Vegas is the first of nine races for new sponsor Tornados, which is a brand of family owned Ruiz Foods. Talk a little bit about this new partnership for the No. 39 Stewart-Haas Racing team.

“Ruiz Foods is a family owned business, and we think of ourselves as a family at Stewart-Haas Racing. We’re excited to have them join our family. Coming into NASCAR and joining SHR is a big deal for them, and we’re excited that they are using us to help grow their brand. Last week, I went to the Ruiz Foods plant in Dinuba, Calif., and spent time with their team members, went on a plant tour and learned how their company works. It was really cool watching the production line and seeing how Tornados are made. It’s kind of funny, though, because while I was there, I realized that this is the first time I’ve ever been associated with any kind of food in my racing career. So this is kind of new for me. But while I was talking about it, I also told Bryce Ruiz (the company’s CEO) that this is probably one of the easiest sponsors for me, in some ways. I mean, it’s a simple connection because of our schedule and what we do. At the track, we are constantly on the go with practice, appearances, media obligations. It’s racing, racing, racing, and then you get a little break. Like on Saturday, our practice sessions are set up where we will have a 30-minute window where the guys get the car turned around and have a chance to eat. It’s nothing for the guys to go to the truck and grab a Tornado, or put one in the microwave really quick, and come back to the garage and keep working on the car. Time-wise and, obviously, taste-wise, it’s ideal for what our guys do – me included – because we are always on the run. We’re busy, and we like it that way, but it’s always nice to be able to have a good bite to eat when we can. It’s funny because I hadn’t thought about that at all until I wasn’t sitting at the plant talking to the plant workers last week.”

While you were spending time at the Ruiz Foods plant, you actually told a couple of stories that the employees thought were funny about how you have been incorporating Tornados into different activities that you have done, and even how you have shared this new food with your family. Tell a couple of those stories again.

“Like I said, I’m really excited about working with Tornados. NASCAR is a new thing for their family, but I think it’s a perfect fit for them because our sport is probably the most family oriented sport out there. For me, it’s fun to have new sponsors and to do different things with them. When I got to the plant, everyone wanted to know what my favorite flavor was. I had to be honest and tell them I had only tried a few of them, but my favorite was Cheesy Pepperjack because my mom used to always get me pepperjack cheese at the grocery store when I was a little boy. But we have different flavors at the racetrack every weekend, so I’m trying them all. The fact that everybody around me wants to try Tornados since they are my sponsor is kind of how I got to the story.

“Anyhow, we have some friends in Utah, and every year we go there in the offseason to snowmobile. It’s a small cabin in Utah. It runs off a generator and it has a wood stove for a furnace and that’s it. We go out there in December to go ride snowmobiles, and that is all we do. When you go snowmobiling, you ride for a while, you find a place to eat, you take some snacks and you take a break and eat. Anyhow, on the snowmobiles, they have these things called hot doggers – it’s just the terminology because people used to throw mini corndogs in them. We got the bright idea to throw some Tornados in there, just to see how they cook, how they warm up, what it’s going to be like. It’s literally a can that gets strapped by a hose clamp to the exhaust of the snowmobile. The harder you ride, the hotter it gets, the quicker the food cooks. So the harder you ride, the quicker you get to eat. We had a few boxes of Tornados, and the Tornados were a hit with the group we were with. They cooked up pretty good in the hot dogger. It’s a weird story, but it’s true.

“The other story they thought was cool was about my grandfather. He’s 85 years old, and we sent him a couple of boxes of different flavors of Tornados earlier this year because he wanted to know what they were. He had his family over, and he did a taste test. I talked to him the other day and he’s ready for another shipment. So, it’s kind of cool the things we can incorporate with a sponsor like this, and I’m looking forward to having some fun off the racetrack and on it with our new sponsor and the No. 39 Tornados Chevrolet.”

It was a disappointing weekend for you and the No. 39 team last weekend at Auto Club Speedway. The No. 39 Haas Automation Chevrolet had moved into the top-10 and had been a solid performer in the race. But then you endured an engine failure. Despite the 36th-place finish, you were very upbeat about how your team raced. Can you talk about that a little bit more?

“It was a really disappointing finish to the race for us. We didn’t have a good finish at Daytona because of a wreck with like five laps to go before the green-white-checker, and we really went to California feeling like we needed to have a good finish. We felt like we had good notes going in there, and we were pretty confident about the racecar we were taking and our game plan. Then, to have an engine failure was tough, but that’s not something that has been common for us since SHR started last season. Hendrick gives us very good, strong, reliable engines and I think we’ve probably had one engine failure in the course of the past year that I can remember besides this one. It’s something that happens – it’s part of racing. It was just disappointing because we had such a strong run going and because we’ve now had two DNFs and we’re back in the same hole that we were in last season.

“But for me and Tony Gibson, I think the race at California really showed us just how much improvement we have made over the course of the past year. Before the season started, I talked a lot about the great work the guys had done in the offseason with the racecars to make them better, and how I thought we had made some big gains. This year, we have notes to go back on, whereas last year, we were a new group of people still learning each other. Last year, we were just trying things. This year, we have notes and data points from all the races so we can come back each year and be a stronger team. California showed that we have made some big improvements as a team. To me, California is a good test because it’s a 2-mile track. It’s that kind of intermediate track where we go the most during the course of the season. That’s also the track that we struggled on a lot last year. After California, I feel like we made some big gains. That car was the most competitive car I have had in a really long time at California. It was good all day long, and we were moving forward every run the entire race. We showed what we are capable of during the long runs. Unfortunately, I just didn’t get a chance to show what I had at the end of the race. It was a bad way to the end the day, but I’m really proud of how good of a car we had and how much we have improved. We still have some work to do, but I’m looking forward to getting to Las Vegas and seeing how we run on a mile-and-a-half track.”

Talk about racing at Las Vegas.

“We had a pretty fast racecar at Las Vegas last year, but we had a loose wheel later in the race. We ended up having to pit under green and that caused us to lose a couple of laps to the leader. We finished 25th, but I remember leaving there last year thinking we had a much better car than that. Last season, the intermediate tracks were our weakness, but we got better throughout the course of the year. After the improvements we made to our mile-and-a-half program last season, and then after what both me and Gibson felt like were huge gains at California last weekend, I’m really looking forward to what we can accomplish this weekend at Las Vegas in the No. 39 Tornados Chevrolet.

“As far as the track goes, they’ve made some changes to it over the past few years. It’s higher-banked, has a rougher surface and there are more bumps. The track has some character to it, which makes it tricky, and I think it’s one of the reasons we like it. I’m looking forward to Las Vegas. I’m really hoping this is the place for my luck to change. I think this team has really improved the way we approach the mile-and-a-half track. I think our cars have gotten better since last year’s Las Vegas race, and I’m confident. Unfortunately, just like last season, we’ve had a couple of bad races to start 2010. We’re hoping that Lady Luck is on our side this weekend.”

TONY GIBSON, Crew Chief of the No. 39 Tornados Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing

Although the California race didn’t turn out as you and the No. 39 team had hoped, you were still very positive following an engine failure and a 36th-place finish. You and Ryan both talked about how much the team had improved and how happy you were with those gains on the racetrack. How important is seeing that improvement and staying upbeat despite the finishes?

“Last year, we had struggled on 2-mile racetracks, and we worked really hard in the offseason to try to find something that Ryan would like to drive there. That was really one of our focuses in the offseason. We did a lot of work with our racecars on the seven-post (shaker rig) at the wind tunnel, and we thought going to California that we had really made some gains. And, in the end, we did. We think, looking at our performance at California and Ryan’s feedback during the race, that this is a good starting spot moving forward. I think we’ll be able to base the rest of our mile-and-a-half races on what we learned this past weekend. We think what we learned and our notes will transfer this weekend to Las Vegas and, hopefully, we will be able to keep some momentum going and continuing making gains on these racetracks that are such a big part of our schedule.

“Honestly, the finishes have not been what we have wanted, but we have really had great racecars the first two races of the season. We had the wreck in Daytona and the engine problem in California, but those are things that are out of our control. We can’t do anything about that. Things like that will happen during the course of the season, but we need to focus on what we have done to these racecars and how we have improved. If we can keep our focus and keep doing what we are doing to improve our position on the racetrack each week, and we can keep the driver excited about the gains that we are making, then it’s going to be just like it was last year. When the luck turns around for us, it’s going to be good, and we are going to be competing for race wins every weekend.”

The No. 39 Chevrolet was a really fast, strong car at Las Vegas last year. How does that, in addition to the fact that the No. 39 Chevrolet was so strong at California, help build momentum for the team this weekend?

“We did have a good car at Las Vegas last year. We qualified sixth, and we were really fast during the whole race. Unfortunately, we had a lose wheel and that ended up costing us. But it was a race where we left feeling really positive about what we had. We’re coming back to Las Vegas with what we believe is an even better car aero-wise. It’s a newer, lighter version of our cars. We think this is really good track, and we believe this is a track where we have a shot at the pole and our first win.

“The improvement we saw at California in our performance on the racetrack is something we’re really proud of. Our racecars are good. Our communication continues to get better each weekend. We’re getting better as a team, and that’s showing in our on-track performances. Again, we haven’t had the finishes we have wanted, but that has been out of our control. We’re picking out the positives and focusing on them.

“For us, Las Vegas is a big weekend. We want to get a good finish and put the last two races behind us. It’s also the first weekend for our new sponsor Tornados, and to be able to give them a good race their first weekend on the car would be something really special. They are a great family, and we’ve all had a lot of fun getting to know them and we’re excited to have them as part of our Stewart-Haas family.”

You can see the replay of the engine blowing up in my last post.

Engine troubles spoiled a solid top-10 run for Ryan Newman in Sunday’s Auto Club 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif. Newman had been a fixture among the top-12 for much of the afternoon before an engine failure relegated the driver of the No. 39 Haas Automation Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) to a 36th-place finish.

“We just lost an engine,” Newman said. “We had a really good car with the Haas Automation Chevrolet, but it just grenaded, basically. I couldn’t tell you what happened, but it was big and there was smoke and that was the end of our day.”

Just a couple of laps before Newman’s engine expired, the No. 39 was at the front of the field, restarting the 250-lap race in second-place. However, Newman didn’t get the restart he had hoped for as he spun the tires and fell back through the field. When he crossed the start/finish line the next time on lap 147, Newman was posted in 16th-place. He circled the track one more time and had just passed the flagstand on lap 148,when smoke billowed from the No. 39 Chevrolet. Newman came over the radio and reported he had lost an engine and was no longer under power.

“I got a horrible restart,” Newman said. “I spun my tires on the restart, but didn’t over-rev it or anything. The next lap, it just blew up.”

It was an especially disappointing day for Newman and the No. 39 team as they were enjoying a strong run at Auto Club Speedway, the home track for the team’s Oxnard Calif.-based co-owner and sponsor Haas Automation, the largest CNC machine tool builder in the western world.

Newman started the race in 18th-place, but he was quickly able to move into the top-12 where he spent much of the race’s first 90 laps.

A slightly loose racecar had been Newman’s biggest issue during the course of the race, but his pit crew had been able to improve those handling issues with air pressure and track bar adjustments. Crew chief Tony Gibson’s calls and the team’s diligent efforts in the pits paid off, and by lap 97 Newman moved into ninth-place. He ran solidly in the top-10 until his final restart on lap 146.

“We had a really good car,” Newman said. “The car was good all day long. We were mixing it up, and that is really the most competitive I’ve been here in a long time. We were working forward every run the entire race. We showed what we are capable of out there on a couple of those long runs.

“I think we’ve made some big improvements as a team, and what we were doing out there today shows that. We feel like we’ve made some big gains as a team. This just is not how I wanted to end the race.”

Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Old Spice/Office Depot Chevrolet Impala for SHR, finished ninth. It was Stewart’s first top-10 of the 2010 Sprint Cup season and his 10th top-10 in 18 career Sprint Cup starts at Fontana.

Stewart continues to lead the SHR driver lineup in the championship point race, as his ninth-place finish bumped him six spots to 17th in the standings where he is 96 points behind series leader Kevin Harvick. Newman lost two spots to fall to 36th in the standings, 215 markers arrears Harvick.

Four-time and reigning Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson beat Harvick by 1.523 seconds to win the Auto Club 500 and score the 48th victory of his Sprint Cup career, his first of the season and his fifth at Fontana. Johnson has now won four of the last six races at the Southern California track.

Finishing third was Jeff Burton, while Mark Martin and Joey Logano rounded out the top-five. Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth, Clint Bowyer, Stewart and Greg Biffle comprised the remainder of the top-10.

There were six caution periods for 30 laps, with 10 drivers failing to finish the 500-mile race.

The next event on the Sprint Cup schedule is the February 28 Shelby American at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

-source: shr

Unfortunately Ryan Newman is starting the 2010 season with 2 DNF’s.

Ryan Newman was having a decent run today at Fontana until his engine blew on lap 147 bring out the 4th caution of the day.

The field had just restarted from caution 3 and Newman had restarted 2nd. Almost immediately on the restart Newman dropped to the bottom of the track. The announcers were speculating that he may have missed a gear or something that hurt his restart and hurt the engine. He blew up later on that lap (or maybe the next lap).

Unofficially this will have Newman 36rh in the points positions after finishing 34th at Daytona.

Juan Pablo Montoya also blew his engine earlier in the race after leading the first 29 laps

Ryan Newman never thought he’d call California “home.”

Admittedly, it’s a bit of a stretch for the Indiana native, who would rather be chopping wood or casting a fishing pole on a pond instead of crunching numbers on a computer or sitting in an endless line of traffic. Picturing himself at ease in the hustle and bustle of the massive metropolitan expanse that is Southern California isn’t something the avid outdoorsman has ever given much consideration.

That is, until now.

When Newman and his No. 39 Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) team roll into Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., this weekend, they are home — the home track for Haas Automation, the co-owner of SHR and this weekend’s primary sponsor for the No. 39 Chevrolet.

Haas Automation, the largest CNC machine tool builder in the western world, has its headquarters in Oxnard, Calif., which is located 100 miles west of Auto Club Speedway. The company’s 1-million-square-foot facility houses 1,200 employees and is the largest, most modern machine tool manufacturing operation in the United States.

Newman’s newest sponsor also hails from California. Tornados, which will sponsor Newman’s No. 39 Chevrolet in nine races in 2010, is part of the family-owned Ruiz Foods, whose headquarters are located in Dinuba, Calif., about 250 miles northwest of Auto Club Speedway.

So, if Newman’s ties to California thanks to his sponsors can help him get a leg up on the field — or gain a home-track advantage, of sorts, in this weekend’s Auto Club 500 — then Newman will gladly embrace the role of a hometown favorite at Fontana.

Ryan Newman At Auto Club Speedway
Starts	Poles	Wins	Top 5	Top 10	Led	AVG ST	AVG FN	DNF
14	1	0	2	4	11	14.50	18.86	2
Stats By Racing News Digest

Over the years, the 2-mile speedway hasn’t been one of Newman’s best tracks. In 14 starts at Fontana, he has one pole, two top-five and four top-10 finishes. Last year, in his first season with SHR, Newman and the No. 39 team finished 28th and 15th, respectively, in the two Cup races at the track.

Newman & Company roll into Fontana and the second race of the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season determined to improve on the past. Last year, in the team’s inaugural season, there were no expectations. But in its sophomore campaign, the bar has been set high for the No. 39 team — improve at each track, win races, earn a berth in the Chase for the Championship, and contend for the overall title.

Last weekend’s season-opener at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway wasn’t how the team wanted to start out the new year. Newman finished a disappointing 34th after being involved in an accident in his No. 39 Chevrolet just seven laps from the end of the race.

Now, the team turns its focus to Auto Club Speedway and racing in its sponsor’s backyard. There’s no better time for the No. 39 Haas Automation team to start achieving some of its goals set for the 2010 season — win races, build momentum and give the hometown supporters in the crowd something to cheer about.

RYAN NEWMAN, Driver of the No. 39 Haas Automation Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing

Talk about racing at Auto Club Speedway.

“Unfortunately, it’s not one of my favorite places to go. I have not had the best record at California. The racetrack can be a lot of fun because it’s a very smooth track and super fast, but I just haven’t done all that well there throughout my career. It’s a track where, a lot of times, your team’s strategy determines the finish because, a lot of times, it becomes a fuel-mileage race. It will be even more interesting to see how, and if, that plays out with the new green-white-checker rule that NASCAR started last weekend at Daytona. We’ll just have to see how the race plays out.

“I do think we’ll see some better racing at California because I think the racing has gotten better each time we’ve gone there. At this track in general, the more it’s aged, the better it’s gotten, as with most race tracks. I think the double-file restarts help the racing a lot, too. They are more advantageous at bigger racetracks, especially the wider ones. When you have a wide racing groove like at California, the cars can get three-wide in the corners and anything can happen. California is not my favorite racetrack. I’ll tell you that first-hand. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good showing there. We improved on our spring performance when we came back in the fall. We had a good car. We overcame a cut tire, but we got bottled up in the wrong line on the restart and ended up getting shuffled back to 15th. Tony Gibson (crew chief) and the guys have really worked on our cars to make them better and lighter in the offseason, and I know they worked a lot on the seven-post and did other things to improve our package for the mile-and-a-half and 2-mile tracks like California. So, we’ll see what happens with the Haas Automation Chevrolet. Our goal is to improve each time we go back.”

This is a big weekend for Stewart-Haas Racing because Auto Club Speedway is a “home track,” of sorts, for team co-owner Haas Automation, which is based in nearby Oxnard, Calif. Talk about the importance of this race for you and the team.

“Everybody wants to be the best when they are racing in their backyard. Just think about how everybody wants to win at Charlotte. You want bragging rights. You want to be top dog on your home turf. California isn’t my home track, but it is a very important race to our co-owner and our sponsor, Haas Automation. Haas Automation has been involved in NASCAR for several years, but I think we have an opportunity to give them something they have not had before as a team sponsor and that’s a win in the Sprint Cup Series. And this year, we have another sponsor that calls California home that has come on board — Tornados. They are an associate sponsor for us this weekend in California, but they are the primary sponsor for nine races. I’m actually going to their headquarters and plant in Dinuba, Calif., on Thursday. We want to make everyone involved with both of these companies proud, and I don’t think there is a better way to do that than to have a strong run on Sunday. It’s cool that a guy from Indiana will have so much support at California.

“To me, California is really where our season starts. Daytona is our biggest race of the season, and things are done a little differently throughout Speedweeks. I’ve always kind of thought that California is a better gauge when it comes to determining how you compare to the other 42-plus teams that are at the racetrack.”

Last weekend, Daytona was not what you had hoped for. How do you put that behind you and now focus on California and the season in front of you? You have talked a lot about the 2010 season and what it means to SHR because it is your second season. What are the team’s goals?

“Daytona was very disappointing — more so than I think a lot of people realize. We were just biding our time in the back of the field and, with 10 laps or so to go, we decided it was time to make our move. I don’t really know what happened, but I was the recipient of it. We were seven laps from the end of the race, well before the green-white-checker, and we ended up with a destroyed racecar. It was just very disappointing. We wanted to come out of the box strong at Daytona, but we walked away with a 34th-place finish. We had good cars but we didn’t get the finish we wanted. Honestly, though, we proved last year that you don’t have to leave Daytona with a top-10 to have a good year. You want to, obviously. Everybody wants to. Daytona is the biggest race and we start with it but, in the end, it’s about consistency and it’s about teamwork and it’s about reliability. Our team did a great job in 2009. I think it was 99.75 percent of all laps that both our cars (the Nos. 39 and the No. 14 of Tony Stewart) completed, and that’s phenomenal. That’s phenomenal for any team, any organization, and I think our guys did a great job for a new organization to be able to achieve that from a mechanical standpoint.

“And in 2010, I think that’s something we want to build on. We want to make improvements. We want to make the Chase. We want to win the championship. And I think we can, as an organization, be that consistent to maintain that slope, to polish up on the things we have learned, to make the corrections on the mistakes that we have made. I think that, ultimately, I want to win a championship and, I feel that, you know, this year we are closer than we were last year because of our time together and the chemistry we have created over the past 365 days. We want to make sure we improve because, in so many people’s eyes, we weren’t supposed to do what we did last year. From a team standpoint, from a performance standpoint, it’s important that we move forward and progress, like you said. How we do that is honestly a people thing. It’s teamwork. It’s building better race cars, communicating, all those things that the 48 team has done for the last four years straight. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us to get to that point, but I think our organization has done a lot of great things in the offseason for our people and for our racecars to be stronger, and we’re going to try to prove that this year.”

TONY GIBSON, Crew Chief of the No. 39 Haas Automation Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing

Last year, the No. 39 team posted 28th-place and 15th-place finishes at Auto Club Speedway. At the time, you said you considered the team’s 2-mile-track program to be one of its weaknesses. How do you feel you have improved the program, and what is your outlook on this weekend’s race?

“We didn’t run well in our first trip to California at all. We were really good in qualifying practice. We were, like, third or fourth quick, but when we went to qualify, we got loose and we just didn’t get a lap in. Then, at the very start of the race, we had a transponder issue, where we had to come back down pit road to replace the transponder for NASCAR. And while all that was happening, we ended up with a loose wing mount plate and, later on, we had a loose wheel. It was almost like we were out of it before we even started. We struggled for track position all day and we really didn’t run that well. We just couldn’t recover from all the issues we had.

“We went back for the second race, and we definitely ran a lot better. I think you could tell we had made improvements on our 2-mile — Michigan-, California-type — racetracks. We didn’t hit the setup solid, but I think we were fifth or sixth with something like seven laps to go. The caution came out, and Ryan ended up being in the wrong line for the double-file restart and got shuffled back. We had a shot at a solid top-10 finish. That race showed we had made some gains. I think throughout the rest of last season, we felt like every time we went to a mile-and-half or 2-mile track, we made even more gains. We’ve spent a lot of time on the seven-post and at the wind tunnel, so we can get this part of our program where we think it should be. We think our cars are better this year and, hopefully, we can go out there and just keep improving on our finishing position.

“We feel more confident going to California this year, but you never know. Sometimes, drivers just seem to struggle on certain racetracks. Ryan will be the first to tell you that he hasn’t had a lot of success at California, but we’re hoping to change that. I just hope we’ve got a package that can help him get over that hump. We’ve made improvements and, hopefully, we can continue to make gains on it, so each time we go back to these tracks, we run better and we qualify better. That’s our goal.”

Many teams consider this weekend’s race to be, really, the first race of the season because Daytona is such a different deal than any other race throughout the course of the season. So what does it take to be competitive at Auto Club Speedway? And how important will strategy from atop the pitbox be at Fontana?

“Track position is huge at California. It’s one of those racetracks — kind of like a Pocono — where you can take a not-so-good-handling racecar and, if you can get track position, you can hang on and do a pretty good job there. The deal is that, once the tires equalize, you’ve got what you’ve got. Your car runs so much better in clean air than it does back there in dirty air, and we have seen that time and time again. So track position is going to be a key for us.

“We’ve got a new tire going out to California this weekend. It’s got more grip, so it’s probably going to be faster. And hopefully with the new tire and more grip, that will help fix some of our problems we had last year. Obviously, the new tire is going to help everybody, but maybe it’s something that can get us just a little bit closer or make it a little easier for us to find the setup that makes Ryan happy with the car.

“Strategy and luck play into every race. As for strategy, that’s always been part of having a good race at California. A lot of races there have come down to fuel mileage, so now, with the green-white-checker deal, we have to figure that into the fuel mileage, too. If you were figuring out your fuel mileage for just one green-white-checker, you can’t do that anymore. Now, you’ve got to do that for potentially three. What you thought was your window for fuel last year, it’s not going to be that, anymore. You’ve got to keep that in mind. The green-white-checker came into play the very first race after NASCAR came up with the rule, and you know it’s going to happen more than not. It’s definitely going to be a strategy race.”

The No. 39 Haas Automation team came out of Daytona in 34th place. Last year, the team left Daytona in 36th place. Recap the week at Daytona. How does something like that affect the team, and how do you get everyone pumped up for this weekend’s race at California?

“This year’s outing at Daytona was almost a mirror image of last year for us. The only difference was that our Daytona 500 car actually made it through the entire week. We had the same car until seven laps to go in the Daytona 500. But it was a disappointing week for us in the end. We had good cars throughout all of Speedweeks — in the Budweiser Shootout and in the Daytona 500. In the Shootout, our strategy was staying in the back and waiting on guys to wreck. It didn’t really pay off because, when we had to get going with eight to go, we ended up right in the middle of them when they wrecked. We qualified third again for the Daytona 500, and missed the front row by just a little bit for the second year. Then our strategy in the Duels was just to run hard and try to stay up front, which is what we were doing. We were running in the top-five with four to go and we felt we had a shot to win it. But the caution fell and we ended up in the wrong line. We just didn’t get going on the final restart of the Duel. And, in the 500, Ryan got wrecked with seven laps to go as he was making his move. We’ve tried strategies all across the board and none of it seems to work. It just comes down to pure luck. We haven’t had a whole lot of that, so we just accept it and go on.

“But one bad Speedweeks doesn’t define this team. We’ve been in worse situations than this. We’ve been here before. It’s nothing new for this team. We’ll dig like hell, and we’ll get out of it. In my opinion, it’s not a speed bump for us. It’s like going to the Super Bowl and, once you’ve done it three or four times, you know that if you get behind on the scoreboard, you can always make it up and come back. If you believe in yourself and your team, you can accomplish it. This team proved last year it can overcome any obstacle that is thrown its way. This team has been through way worse than this and has come out on the good side.”