When Ryan Newman announced that he would be moving to Roush Fenway Racing for the 2019 season, a lot of folks snickered and saw it as the beginning of the end of his racing career. 10 races into the season, it looks like those folks are crazy.
Despite being involved in a lap 10 crash, Newman hung tough all day long in the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway and when Chase Elliott was surging to the front of the field in the closing laps, Newman wasn’t far behind in his brightly colored green Acorns Ford Mustang.
When a crash on the final lap froze the field, Newman had worked his way into the seventh position, which is good enough for Newman’s best finish of the season.
“That was crazy,” Newman said after climbing from his car. “I took the inside line and started there and stayed there. Never had many places to go but either way it was a good run and a good team effort. Proud of the entire team to be able to keep it together. I think we kept most of the race cars on the race track which was probably a lot of luck. We will go on to Dover.”
This comes on the heels of ninth place finishes at Bristol and Richmond.
With Newman’s latest great run, he now moves into Playoff contention as he is now 14th in the championship standings. Obviously, it’s early as there are 16 races left until the Playoff grid is secured, but it’s well ahead of where most expected Newman and the Roush Fenway team to be at this point in the season.
