Newman’s show of restraint and class in championship race could teach other drivers valuable lessons

By Nov 16, 2014, 10:14 PM EST
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Ryan Newman made the Sprint Cup Championship Round last Sunday by one point.

He had to run Kyle Larson into the wall to do so, but with his season on the line, for Newman it was the right thing to do at the right time.

One week later in Sunday’s season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Newman ultimately lost the championship by one point.

Once again, his season was on the line. He could have made the same move on Kevin Harvick in the final two laps that he did to Larson, but Newman elected not to do so. This time, it wasn’t the right thing to do and wasn’t the right way to do it.

By not resorting to making a move that could potentially have won him the title – but ultimately may have branded him to be a dirty driver at the same time – Newman played it clean, fair and square.

“I thought about hauling it in there wide open but that wouldn’t have been the right thing to do,” Newman said of Harvick. “I wouldn’t want him to do that to me.”

Even though Sunday may be the closest Newman may ever get to winning a Sprint Cup championship – we certainly hope it isn’t his last chance, though – by not wrecking Harvick, Newman showed an amazing amount of restraint and courage.

And most importantly, an incredible amount of class.

I’m sure there are many who would not have faulted Newman if he turned Harvick on the final lap, with such a move falling under the category of “That’s racin’.”

And I’m also sure that for many others, Newman would have been more than justified in doing so for the way Stewart-Haas Racing did him last season.

One week, Newman was told his contract wasn’t being renewed because there weren’t enough sponsorship dollars to run his team in 2014. Tough, kid, but that’s business.

One week later, billionaire team co-owner Gene Haas goes out and signs Kurt Busch to effectively replace Newman, his former Penske Racing teammate – and then Haas announced he’d sponsor Busch out of his own pocket.

If that isn’t a kick to the groin for Newman, I don’t know what is.

But to his credit, Newman has been a pro’s pro since. He not only won the Brickyard 400 and praised SHR for its collective efforts in getting him to Victory Lane, he also wound as SHR’s lone representative in last year’s Chase for the Sprint Cup.

While he didn’t have the kind of success he would have hoped for in the 2013 Chase, even in a lame duck situation, Newman stayed professional and classy the whole way through.

Just like he did Sunday.

While he deserves all the credit for what he achieved Sunday, Harvick needs to add one person’s name to all those he thanked while celebrating his race win and championship on stage:

Ryan Newman.

Don’t get him wrong, Newman would have loved to be in Harvick’s shoes. But he also has a conscience and a sense of what’s right and wrong that many fellow drivers don’t.

“I really was hoping he would slip a tire, blow a motor, something like that, that was our only hope,” Newman said. “All those things go through your mind.”

But Harvick held it all together and drove on to the race win and championship.

“It was fun from my standpoint to come from where we came from this year,” Newman said. “We started the season in Daytona getting spun out in the last five laps to being the runner-up for the championship. It was a good rebound for us.”

If it had been Brad Keselowski or Kyle Busch or Joey Logano or Denny Hamlin in the same situation in the final laps Sunday, I’m not 100 percent sure they would have been as gentlemanly and gentile in dealing with Harvick on that final lap as Newman ultimately was.

“We came back for the entire season to make our best finish our last finish,” Newman said in the post-race media conference. “It is disappointing, don’t get me wrong, but there’s no point in being a sore loser.”

Other drivers may have moped or maybe even refused to speak to the media for coming so close, but not Newman. He accepted that he was the first loser and moved on.

Even in talking after what was perhaps the toughest loss he’s ever suffered, Newman even joked around about the outcome.

“For me personally, it’s the first real championship I’ve been in position to lose in the last race,” Newman said. “I was thinking after I got out of the car, our tables really turned if you think about it when Gordon didn’t win Phoenix.

“Because if (Gordon would) have won Phoenix, Harvick would have been out (of the championship battle) and we’d have been the top guy at the end of the race. I blame all this on Jeff Gordon.”

In a season that saw Newman with an unlikely Cinderella-like finish, there were a lot of lessons learned, more positive than negative, and that’s ultimately fine with Newman.

Sunday wasn’t his day, but a year from now in the 2015 season finale, it very well may finally be Newman’s day, just like it was Sunday for Harvick.

“It’s been an amazing year,” Newman said. “They say you have to lose one before you can win one. I’m ready to win one now.”

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‘It’s gnarly, bro’: IndyCar drivers face new challenge on streets of downtown Detroit

By Jun 2, 2023, 7:32 PM EDT
IndyCar Detroit downtown
James Black/Penske Entertainment
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DETROIT – It was the 1968 motion picture, “Winning” when actress Joanne Woodward asked Paul Newman if he were going to Milwaukee in the days after he won the Indianapolis 500 as driver Frank Capua.

“Everybody goes to Milwaukee after Indianapolis,” Newman responded near the end of the film.

Milwaukee was a mainstay as the race on the weekend after the Indianapolis 500 for decades, but since 2012, the first race after the Indy 500 has been Detroit at Belle Isle Park.

This year, there is a twist.

Instead of IndyCar racing at the Belle Isle State Park, it’s the streets of downtown Detroit on a race course that is quite reminiscent of the old Formula One and CART race course that was used from 1982 to 1991.

Formula One competed in the United States Grand Prix from 1982 to 1988. Beginning in 1989, CART took over the famed street race through 1991. In 1992, the race was moved to Belle Isle, where it was held through last year (with a 2009-2011 hiatus after the Great Recession).

The Penske Corp. is the promoter of this race, and they did a lot of good at Belle Isle, including saving the Scott Fountain, modernizing the Belle Isle Casino, and basically cleaning up the park for Detroit citizens to enjoy.

The race, however, had outgrown the venue. Roger Penske had big ideas to create an even bigger event and moving it back to downtown Detroit benefitted race sponsor Chevrolet. The footprint of the race course goes around General Motors world headquarters in the GM Renaissance Center – the centerpiece building of Detroit’s modernized skyline.

INDYCAR IN DETROIT: Entry list, schedule, TV info for this weekend

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Motor City is about to roar with the sound of Chevrolet and Honda engines this weekend as the NTT IndyCar Series is the featured race on the nine-turn, 1.7-mile temporary street course.

It’s perhaps the most unique street course on the IndyCar schedule because of the bumps on the streets and the only split pit lane in the series.

The pit lanes has stalls on opposing sides and four lanes across an unusual rectangular pit area (but still only one entry and exit).

Combine that, with the bumps and the NTT IndyCar Series drivers look forward to a wild ride in Motor City.

“It’s gnarly, bro,” Arrow McLaren driver Pato O’Ward said before posting the fastest time in Friday’s first practice. “It will be very interesting because the closest thing that I can see it being like is Toronto-like surfaces with more of a Long Beach-esque layout.

“There’s less room for error than Long Beach. There’s no curbs. You’ve got walls. I think very unique to this place.

PRACTICE RESULTS: Speeds from the first session

“Then it’s a bit of Nashville built into it. The braking zones look really very bumpy. Certain pavements don’t look bumpy but with how the asphalt and concrete is laid out, there’s undulation with it. So, you can imagine the cars are going to be smashing on every single undulation because we’re going to go through those sections fairly fast, and obviously the cars are pretty low. I don’t know.

“It looks fun, man. It’s definitely going to be a challenge. It’s going to be learning through every single session, not just for drivers and teams but for race control. For everyone.

“Everybody has to go into it knowing not every call is going to be smooth. It’s a tall task to ask from such a demanding racetrack. I think it’ll ask a lot from the race cars as well.”

The track is bumpy, but O’Ward indicated he would be surprised if it is bumper than Nashville. By comparison to Toronto, driving at slow speed is quite smooth, but fast speed is very bumpy.

“This is a mix of Nashville high-speed characteristics and Toronto slow speed in significant areas,” O’Ward said. “I think it’ll be a mix of a lot of street courses we go to, and the layout looks like more space than Nashville, which is really tight from Turn 4 to 8. It looks to be a bit more spacious as a whole track, but it’ll get tight in multiple areas.”

The concept of having four-wide pit stops is something that excites the 24-year-old driver from Monterey, Mexico.

“I think it’s innovation, bro,” O’Ward said. “If it works out, we’ll look like heroes.

“If it doesn’t, we tried.”

Because of the four lanes on pit road, there is a blend line the drivers will have to adhere to. Otherwise, it would be chaos leaving the pits compared to a normal two-lane pit road.

“If it wasn’t there, there’d be guys fighting for real estate where there’s one car that fits, and there’d be cars crashing in pit lane,” O’Ward said. “I get why they did that. It’s the same for everybody. I don’t think there’s a lot of room to play with. That’s the problem.

“But it looks freaking gnarly for sure. Oh my God, that’s going to be crazy.”

Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing believes the best passing areas will be on the long straights because of the bumps in the turns. That is where much of the action will be in terms of gaining or losing a position in the race.

“It will also be really easy to defend in my opinion,” Palou said. “Being a 180-degree corner, you just have to go on the inside and that’s it. There’s going to be passes for sure but its’ going to be risky.

“Turn 1, if someone dives in, you end up in the wall. They’re not going to be able to pass you on the exit, so maybe with the straight being so long you can actually pass before you end up on the braking zone.”

Palou’s teammate, Marcus Ericsson, was at the Honda simulator in Brownsburg, Indiana, before coming to Detroit and said he was shocked by the amount of bumps on the simulator.

Race promoter Bud Denker, the President of Penske Corporation, and Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix President Michael Montri, sent the track crews onto the streets with grinders to smooth out the bumps on the race course several weeks ago.

“They’ve done a decent amount of work, and even doing the track walk, it looked a lot better than what we expected,” Ericsson said. “I don’t think it’ll be too bad. I hope not. That’ll be something to take into account.

“I think the track layout doesn’t look like the most fun. Maybe not the most challenging. But I love these types of tracks with rules everywhere. It’s a big challenge, and you have to build up to it. That’s the types of tracks that I love to drive. It’s a very much Marcus Ericsson type of track. I like it.”

Scott Dixon, who was second fastest in the opening session, has competed on many new street circuits throughout his legendary racing career. The six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion for Chip Ganassi Racing likes the track layout, even with the unusual pit lane.

“I don’t think that’s going to be something that catches on where every track becomes a double barrel,” Dixon said. “It’s new and interesting.

“As far as pit exit, I think Toronto exit is worse with how the wall sticks out. I think in both lanes, you’ve got enough lead time to make it and most guys will make a good decision.”

It wasn’t until shortly after 3 p.m. ET on Friday that the IndyCar drivers began the extended 90-minute practice session to try out the race course for the first time in real life.

As expected, there were several sketchy moments, but no major crashes during the first session despite 19 local yellow flags for incidents and two red flags.

Rookie Agustin Canapino had to cut his practice short after some damage to his No. 78 Dallara-Chevrolet, but he was among many who emerged mostly unscathed from scrapes with the wall.

“It was honestly less carnage than I expected,” said Andretti Autosport’s Kyle Kirkwood, who was third fastest in the practice after coming off his first career IndyCar victory in the most recent street race at Long Beach in April. “I think a lot of people went off in the runoffs, but no one actually hit the wall (too hard), which actually surprised me. Hats off to them for keeping it clean, including myself.

“It was quite a bit less grip than I think everyone expected. Maybe a little bit more bumpy down into Turn 3 than everyone expected. But overall they did a good job between the two manufacturers. I’m sure everyone had pretty much the same we were able to base everything off of. We felt pretty close to maximum right away.”

Most of the preparation for this event was done either on the General Motors Simulator in Huntersville, North Carolina, or the Honda Performance Development simulator in Brownsburg, Indiana.

“Now, we have simulators that can scan the track, so we have done plenty of laps already,” Power told NBC Sports. “They have ground and resurfaced a lot of the track, so it should be smoother.

“But nothing beats real-world experience. It’s going to be a learning experience in the first session.”

As a Team Penske driver, Power and his teammates were consulted about the progress and layout of the Detroit street course. They were shown what was possible with the streets that were available.

“We gave some input back after we were on the similar what might be ground and things like that,” Power said.

Racing on the streets of Belle Isle was a fairly pleasant experience for the fans and corporate sponsor that compete in the race.

But the vibe at the new location gives this a “big event” feel.

“The atmosphere is a lot better,” Power said. “The location, the accessibility for the fans, the crowd that will be here, it’s much easier. I think it will be a much better event.

“It feels like a Long Beach, only in a much bigger city. That is what street course racing is all about.”

Because the track promoter is also the team owner, Power and teammates Scott McLaughlin and Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden will have a very busy weekend on the track, and with sponsor and personal appearances.

“That’s what pays the bills and allows us to do this,” Power said.

Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500