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Thursday, May 24
Rookie lands pole in just third Cup race
Associated Press
CONCORD, N.C. -- A rookie revived the youth movement at the
Coca-Cola 600 on Thursday night, with 23-year-old Ryan Newman
winning the pole for NASCAR's longest race of the year after
qualifying was delayed more than two hours by rain.
Newman ran a lap of 185.217 mph around Lowe's Motor Speedway,
quick enough to hold off heavyweights like Jeff Gordon and Rusty
Wallace, both of whom qualified after him.
|  | | Ryan Newman claimed the pole for Sunday's Coca-Cola 600 in only his third career Winston Cup start. |
"It's super big for us," Newman said. "I never imagined it,
but the weather conditions helped a lot for the speeds and I had a
great race car."
Gordon tried his best to knock off Newman, but his speed of
184.900 mph only earned him the second spot.
"I gave it everything I had and just came up second," said
Gordon, who won The Winston last Saturday and has started from the
pole seven times on the 1.5-mile track.
"Ryan was fast, he put a great lap up there and I knew no one
was going to touch it."
Todd Bodine qualified third, followed by Bill Elliott in a Dodge
and Jimmy Spencer. Kevin Harvick was sixth, followed by Mike
Skinner and Johnny Benson. Ward Burton and Mark Martin rounded out
the top 10.
Newman's pole comes on the heels of Dale Earnhardt Jr. starting
from the front last year and Matt Kenseth going on to win the race.
Both were rookies.
Earnhardt Jr. qualified 19th on Thursday, and Kenseth needed a
provisional to make the field, running the slowest lap of the night
at 179.724. He'll start 40th.
Newman, a future Winston Cup teammate of Wallace and Jeremy
Mayfield, actually isn't even a rookie this year.
He's not eligible to compete for Rookie of the Year because he's
running an "ABC" schedule for Penske Racing South this season --
competing in a blend of ARCA, Busch and Cup races.
It's all part of the grand plan of team owner Roger Penske, who
is grooming Newman to run a full Cup season in 2002. He'd be the
third driver on that team, joining Wallace and Mayfield.
"The past year basically we've been on this ladder taking one
step at a time and we made a big step here," he said. "But we
know it's a really tall ladder and we're just trying to get as many
laps in as we can all year."
But he's no stranger to Lowe's Motor Speedway.
He owns the overall track record for speed, qualifying an ARCA
car last October at 186.780 mph.
And he competed in The Winston Open last week and was running
away from the field before his car blew an engine with three laps
to go. Now he'll have to figure out how to make it last for 600
miles on Sunday night.
"It's going to be tough, 600 miles, 400 laps is going to be a
different deal for me," he said. "We'll just see what we can do.
My crew chief, Matt Borland, has done an awesome job. He's given me
a comfortable race car here so I can push the pedal."
It will be just the third Winston Cup race of Newman's career.
He started a race in Phoenix last year but failed to finish and
placed 41st. And he raced again in Las Vegas this spring and was
able to stay in the race while finishing 33rd.
Tony Stewart, who plans to run in both the Indianapolis 500 and
the Coca-Cola 600 on the same day, qualified 12th.
Stewart will start seventh at Indianapolis, where he plans to
run 500 miles before flying immediately to Charlotte for the early
evening start of the 600.
So his qualifying run really didn't matter. If he's not back in
Concord for the 3:45 p.m. driver meeting, he'll automatically be
sent to the back of the 43-car field.
"I was pretty happy with that, but we're still going to start
43rd so it doesn't matter," Stewart said.
Dale Jarrett, who holds a 14-point advantage over Gordon for the
points lead, failed to qualify because he wrecked on the warm-up
lap.
Jarrett's car slid down low on the track and bottomed out,
causing him to spin up and around into the Turn 4 wall. The right
rear of his Ford smashed into the wall, forcing Jarrett to take a
provisional to make the field and get his backup car out for the
race. He'll start 37th.
"It got turned around on me and I couldn't save it," Jarrett
said. "I'm OK, though. We'll get working on this backup and try to
get it ready to run."
Among the drivers who didn't make the field were Kyle Petty
and John Andretti, who failed to get the No. 43 car into a race for
the first time since July, 1994 when Wally Dallenbach didn't make
the race in Loudon, N.H. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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