Ryan Newman has been linked to this NASCAR Cup Series team for the 2024 season. Would this team be a good situation for Newman?
[autotag]Ryan Newman[/autotag] stepped away from the NASCAR Cup Series after the 2021 season, one year after his terrifying crash at the 2020 Daytona 500. Newman didn’t compete in a single Cup Series race during the 2022 season but returned in 2023. The 46-year-old driver has now been linked to a possible return in 2024.
According to Motorsport.com’s Nick DeGroot, Newman is one driver who has been tied to Rick Ware Racing and the No. 15 Cup car. The entry is one of two chartered cars that do not have full plans announced for the 2024 NASCAR season. As for Rick Ware Racing, the No. 15 team has been used for part-time drivers over the last several years.
The organization has been taking steps in the right direction, so if Newman wants an opportunity to race at the highest level, this would be a good one. Newman ran well in his eight races for Rick Ware Racing and would help grow the program. With the 2024 Daytona 500 coming soon, an announcement about the entry should be nearing.
Three-time Lucas Oil Dirt Late Model champion Jonathan Davenport survived an onslaught of sliders on the final restart and to complete a wire-to-wire victory in the main event of the Camping World SRX Series season finale on Thursday night at Lucas …
Three-time Lucas Oil Dirt Late Model champion Jonathan Davenport survived an onslaught of sliders on the final restart and to complete a wire-to-wire victory in the main event of the Camping World SRX Series season finale on Thursday night at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., while Ryan Newman secured the summer short track series championship in the opening heat.
Davenport was joined on the podium by Brad Keselowski and Kenny Schrader but the driver that gave him the biggest challenge on the night was Clint Bowyer. Much of the 90-lap main event featured Davenport and Bowyer running nose-to-tail, three seconds ahead of the field, simply waiting for the figurative pay window to open before implementing the moves that would decide the race.
Bowyer made multiple attempts at the lead, one bump into Turn 1 on lap 74, and an epic slider into Turn 1 on a restart with 10 laps remaining. Contact between the No. 99 of Ernie Francis Jr. and the No. 6 of Keselowski set up Bowyer taking the bottom as opposed to the outside that he had chosen for much of the night. The slider was thrown in vain, though, as Davenport threw one right back and drove away to a multi-car lead.
“I really didn’t think he could slide all the way across there and get in front of me, but he did a good job not going out of the park and I just barely hit him enough to get him messed up, so I could get a run going back the other way,” related Davenport. “Then everybody was on his tail in (Turns) 3 and 4, so I don’t know if we were three- or four-wide coming off there, but it was definitely fun.
“I’m sure the fans enjoyed it. We’re out here to have fun — they don’t want nobody just ruining the show. We had a great car, the guys did an excellent job on it from the tore-up stuff they had last week. I figured a caution would come late but we were ready for it. This is something I’ll definitely remember for a long time; hopefully they’ll invite me back some time.”
Newman celebrated his championship alongside the podium trio, having clinched the title based on the results of the first heat.
“It’s really special, racing against the greatest drivers in the world, in my opinion… then to win the championship in equal cars says something — it’s a feather in my cap I guess you could say,” said Newman. “The (SRX) guys slaved six days for six weeks in a row getting everything ready to do what we’re doing. (It’s) just an honor to be a part of it, to be a champion.
“Ending up fourth was pretty special in itself — I never finished outside of the top 4 in a feature in all six races. Consistency was obviously very important. I wish we could’ve had the original Stafford, the rain-shortened one, I think that was going to be a really special start to the season, then to back it up the next week. Either way, like I said, proud to be part of it — so many great people and friends. I’m no youngster, so a lot of people that have been around and to be apart of this, it’s unique and a lot of fun. If they’ll have me next year, I’ll be here.”
Although the final standings show Newman winning the championship by 45 points over Keselowski and Marco Andretti, Tony Stewart — who wound up fourth, 48 points back — was the only other driver championship-eligible entering the night, but was eliminated with a 10th-place finish in the opening heat.
On July 13 at Stafford Speedway, lightning put a halt to Ryan Newman’s late race march to hunt down Denny Hamlin in the opening event of the Camping World Series SRX Series. Newman had to settle for a second place to Hamlin in the rain-shortened …
On July 13 at Stafford Speedway, lightning put a halt to Ryan Newman’s late race march to hunt down Denny Hamlin in the opening event of the Camping World Series SRX Series. Newman had to settle for a second place to Hamlin in the rain-shortened season opener. With an unexpected return to Stafford Thursday, and no storms to slow his roll, Newman once again had the fast car late, and this time had the laps to get the job done. Newman passed Daniel Suarez on lap 74 of the 80-lap main event to win.
“Kept my car straight, tried to be easy on the brakes and be good to my Goodyear Eagles,” Newman said. “I felt like I did an OK job. I feel like the other guys were pretty aggressive. That played to my favor. You never know how a race is going to unfold. Last week we got cut short by the rain. Tonight, it took us 74 of the 80 laps today to get the job done.
It was the second series win at Stafford for Newman, who won the 2022 event at the paved half-mile.
Suarez, making his series debut and first visit to Stafford, held on for second while reigning series champion Marco Andretti was third.
The SRX Series was originally slated to have its second event at Thunder Road International Speedbowl in Barre, VT, but catastrophic flooding last week forced a return to Stafford.
Former Stafford Speedway regular Ryan Preece started on the pole. On lap 4 Suarez got by Preece for the lead in Turn 1, but Preece battled back to regain the top spot five laps later. Tony Kanaan got by Suarez for second place on a lap 33 restart. On lap 40 Preece and Kanaan had checked out from third place Suarez. By lap 43 Kanaan was stalking all over Preece’s bumper.
On lap 47 Preece slid sideways going into Turn 1 and slapped the wall hard, allowing Kanaan to go to the lead. Preece held second place for the next 10 laps but began fading after a lap 56 restart and eventually pulled off track at lap 65.
“I just went down into [Turn] 1 and the brake pedal went to the floor,” Preece said of his contact with the wall. “From there I just kept pumping them and pumping them every lap and it just kind of took off. It didn’t really have much stopping power. It was fun, I had a blast there for a while. Obviously disappointed because we had a really good car.”
On lap 63 Newman went by Suarez for second. At that point Kanaan had built a 1.3s lead. Newman cut the lead to a half second within four laps and was on Kanaan’s bumper when caution flew for a wreck involving Hallie Deegan and Paul Tracy in a battle for sixth place on lap 72
“He just turned down on me,” Deegan said of the contact that sent Tracy spinning into the wall. “I was on the bottom. I was under him. There’s two ways to go about it. Either you are there and if they want to turn down and bounce off you, so be it. You can’t do anything about that. There’s so many times when I’m the one checking up to let someone come back down. Paul races pretty hard so I don’t mind doing it. I didn’t really do anything to be honest, he turned down on me.”
On the ensuing restart Kanaan took the field to green but in turn one his car went straight to the wall with no brakes.
“I lost my brakes,” Kannan said. “I had them and all of the sudden we restarted and when I went into Turn 1, I think you guys can see how quick that was. And it was not pleasant having no brakes and heading straight into that wall. It was going to be a hell of a win. We battled with Tony [Stewart], Daniel [Suarez] and Ryan [Preece].”
With Kanaan limping around the track, Suarez got by Newman to take over the lead before caution flew on lap 73 for a Brad Keselowski wreck in Turn 1.
Newman and Saurez went side-by-side on the restart before Newman got by Suarez for the lead for good out of turn two on lap 74.
“In general he was better on the short runs every run, but he had used up a lot of his tires and brakes in my opinion,” Newman said of Suarez. “It was more a matter of how wide he made his race car. He got washed up a little bit there and I got underneath him and was able to make the move. My car cut better than I thought it was going to at the end of the race there.”
Said Suarez: “I don’t know where [Newman] was coming from, but he was very quick. That was a lot of fun. … I was very happy to be here. It was a good run, it was fun.”
Andretti said he learned a lesson last week at Stafford to save his brakes.
“I took care of myself this week,” Andretti said.”The brakes were going long, but they didn’t go today. I think it cost me a shot at winning last week, but it helped me got a podium today.”
Newman left the track with series points lead after two of six events, with Andretti second in the standings, 15 points off the top spot. Paul Tracy, who was 11th Thursday, is third in the standings, 23 points behind Newman.
Stewart won the first heat race and Keselowski won the second heat race
Ryan Newman and Rick Ware Racing had a long day Sunday at Darlington Raceway, but according to Newman, the results were deceiving. “It was a decent run for us, I feel,” Newman said. “For me, I ran out of talent. I’ve seen other guys run out of …
Ryan Newman and Rick Ware Racing had a long day Sunday at Darlington Raceway, but according to Newman, the results were deceiving.
“It was a decent run for us, I feel,” Newman said. “For me, I ran out of talent. I’ve seen other guys run out of talent several times in one race. So, I feel like it was decent.”
Newman wound up 28th in his first NASCAR Cup Series race since the 2021 season finale. Rick Ware Racing was able to put the former Daytona 500 champion in the car for the Goodyear 400 as it goes through replacements for Cody Ware, who was indefinitely suspended by NASCAR last month after being arrested for assault.
Despite the time away, Newman immediately felt comfortable in the Next Gen car. He qualified 26th.
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Newman lost a lap early in Sunday’s 400-mile race and never recovered the track position. There were also concerning comments from Newman about dealing with rib pain, which was the result of a badly fitted seat.
“My seat was not comfortable,” Newman said. “I had rib pain after the end of the first stage, so I was miserable in the car. I’ve got a cramp in my foot. My ribs feel like somebody punched me. So, I’m just happy to be walking and moving right now.”
The day was capped off when Newman spun on his own late in the final stage. But none of the adversity dampened his view of the day, and Newman remains open to the possibility of doing more races after he was announced as being set for select events with the team.
“I had fun today, there’s no doubt about that,” Newman said. “It’s not the finish I think our team deserved and we’re capable of, but ultimately, we had some decent speed in the car (in) my first experience with it.
“So, we’ll see. We’ll have a discussion.”
As for what it was like to be back in Cup Series competition, mixing it up in the field, Newman laughed at being able to “watch the idiots.”
“It was fine,” Newman continued about his day. “We never caught any cautions early to help us get back on the lead lap after we lost a lap, and literally, we missed it by one on the first caution, and then [AJ Allmendinger] got the lucky dog. That would have changed our day.
“Ultimately, like I said, wasn’t comfortable in the car and got some work to do. We’ll work on it.”
Ryan Newman enjoyed his welcome back to the NASCAR Cup Series on Saturday at Darlington Raceway in the first of what’s expected to be a handful of races for Rick Ware Racing. The former Daytona 500 winner hasn’t run a race since the finale in 2021 …
Ryan Newman enjoyed his welcome back to the NASCAR Cup Series on Saturday at Darlington Raceway in the first of what’s expected to be a handful of races for Rick Ware Racing.
The former Daytona 500 winner hasn’t run a race since the finale in 2021 but fell right back into a rhythm, qualifying 26th in the No. 51 Ford. He found the adjustment to driving the Next Gen car easier than expected.
“It’s fun to be back and at my favorite racetrack,” Newman said. “I will say that the practice and qualifying session was less dynamic than I thought it was going to be. The changes from the old car, the shifting, and all that stuff — I felt like I adapted to all that stuff rather quickly.
“But the track is still my favorite, so that made it a lot easier. It’s easier to dance with a girl that knows how to dance.”
It was perfect timing for Newman to make his return as far as balancing time with his daughters and there being an open seat. He’s never stopped wanting to be a Cup Series driver, but it was about finding the right opportunity.
“I literally started this conversation prior to Martinsville and it was by accident when I texted Tommy Baldwin asking him about an opportunity to race a modified,” said Newman. “He asked me if I wanted to go to Martinsville, and I said, ‘In a modified?’ And he goes, ‘No, in a Cup car.’
“It all worked out for us to put all this together and do this, so thanks to Jacob Companies and Biohaven and Rick Ware Racing to give us the opportunity to…I say play, but ultimately I feel like we’ve got a pretty competitive car that we just have to execute and see if we can move up from where we start.”
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Another variable that plays into it being the right opportunity is the race car. Newman knows he’s not driving a winning car with Rick Ware, but Next Gen has equalized the competition, and he believes he can be competitive.
“When you tell the guys that they have to put this nut, this washer, this bolt, this whatever, and have all these tolerances, then you’re taking a lot of the team characterization out of performance,” Newman said. “When I left, Gibbs was stout. Hendrick was stout. And there were obvious advantages per chassis that grandfathered in, who had the best nose and things like that. So, I think it’s a good opportunity for me to sample where the series is right now.”
Newman hasn’t been out of the loop while away, staying tuned into what’s been going on, especially the development of the new car. Next Gen is in its second year of action, and for a while Newman was hesitant about where things stood with safety. He felt proven right with the injuries seen last season, but said he’s racing at Darlington because he feels comfortable.
“It’s fun to be back, and it’s fun to have the opportunity,” he said. “I look forward to tomorrow.”
Rick Ware Racing announced Newman for select races this season, but it’s unclear where he’s going to appear after Darlington. Newman was also tightlipped about what was next.
“I told them, ‘The only way I’m going to do this and continue to do this is if it’s fun,’” he said. “Today was fun, so we’ll see.”
Ryan Newman will make a return to NASCAR Cup Series competition by running select races for Rick Ware Racing. The team announced Friday that the former Cup Series rookie of the year will make his first appearance with the team next weekend at …
Ryan Newman will make a return to NASCAR Cup Series competition by running select races for Rick Ware Racing.
The team announced Friday that the former Cup Series rookie of the year will make his first appearance with the team next weekend at Darlington Raceway. Newman is an 18-time winner in the Cup Series, including a triumph in the 2008 Daytona 500.
Newman has not run a Cup Series race since 2021, which was his last season driving the No. 6 Ford for Jack Roush. He has 725 career starts.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to work with Rick Ware Racing and Ford,” Newman said. “I think this will be good for all of us with our combined experience and knowledge. Being part of the throwback weekend at one of my favorite tracks in Darlington is pretty special. After recently being named one of NASCAR’s 75 Greatest Drivers, it carries even some significance.”
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Newman has made 26 starts at Darlington with 14 top-10 finishes.
“I remember watching ‘Thursday Night Thunder’ on ESPN and seeing Ryan compete against some stout competition in those days,” said team owner Rick Ware. “I became a fan then, and when he first came to NASCAR, I knew he was going to be a great driver and win a lot of races.
“He brings great depth and insight to RWR while we continue to grow our team. Ryan’s been a great ambassador for our sport and Ford. We’re really looking forward to racing with him this season.”
Additional races for Newman beyond Darlington will be revealed at a later date.
From Dale Earnhardt Sr. to Ryan Newman, here’s how NASCAR responded to some of it’s worst wrecks with safety advancements.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ryan Newman has no memory of his spectacularly violent crash during the last lap of the 2020 Daytona 500.
He doesn’t remember the team of NASCAR first responders who helped save his life after his No. 6 Ford flipped, landed upside down and slid on the track with fire and sparks shooting out of it. He doesn’t recall firefighters extinguishing the flames, a paramedic crawling into his upside-down car to assess his condition or how the safety team rolled his car over before severing the roof, extracting him and getting him into an ambulance.
But he knows exactly what happened, thanks to someone compiling a YouTube video with several angles of the crash.
“I’ve watched every angle that I could possibly watch,” Newman said last week. “The biggest problem is I don’t have any memory of my own angle, which is the ultimate angle. And that’s gone, and that will always be gone no matter how many times I watch a replay or different variations of that replay.”
https://youtu.be/p11IUYaf4XM?t=30
He said he studies his own wrecks, as well as ones he’s not involved in, for one major reason: safety. Aided in part by his engineering degree from Purdue, he’s one of the most relentless and vocal safety advocates in the NASCAR garage.
It has been 20 years since Dale Earnhardt Sr. was killed in a wreck at the Daytona 500, and the cars are clearly much safer. That crash led to dramatic changes, just as Newman’s incident forced NASCAR to investigate what happened last year and respond with safety advancements and adjusted practices.
“I’ve lost some good friends,” Newman said, specifically mentioning Kenny Irwin Jr., who died in 2000 after crashing at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Irwin was one of three drivers in NASCAR’s three national series to die that year as the result of a crash, along with Adam Petty and Tony Roper.
“We will always continue to learn from those that we lose and those that we don’t lose, as long as we keep focused on the things that we need to to increase our level of safety.”
Rescuing Ryan Newman
It took just shy of 16 minutes from the time Newman’s car stopped sliding on its roof and came to a stop to get the driver out and into an ambulance. He was taken to a nearby Daytona Beach hospital, put in a medically induced coma and suffered what he described as a “brain bruise.” He was released from the hospital less than 48 hours after the wreck.
Ryan Newman and his daughters leaving Halifax Medical Center less than two days after his 2020 Daytona 500 crash.(Roush Racing via AP)
About 200 first responders, including firefighters and medical personnel, are on the roster at Daytona International Speedway, and they’re trained to handle a variety of incidents. And really, they have to be, especially when the iconic track is famous for its wrecks in an already inherently violent sport.
In those 16 minutes, the track services crew put out the flames and worked on the car, and the NASCAR AMR safety team — which includes paramedics, physicians and neurologists — tended to Newman, NASCAR executive vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O’Donnell said.
The only moment Newman wasn’t being treated in that time frame was when they rolled the car over before extracting him.
“Prior to Daytona of last year, [the safety team] met in Daytona, and they practiced a rollover procedure, which was great,” said NASCAR vice president of racing operations John Bobo. “It instills that muscle memory that allows emergency responders to respond when they need [to].”
Bobo compared it to an orchestra, which would make Todd Marshall the conductor.
As manager of NASCAR’s track services, Marshall watched Newman’s crash unfold from race control in the tower above Daytona International Speedway. As soon as the cars began wrecking, he said he began to estimate where Newman’s car and the others would ultimately stop so the emergency response teams would know precisely where to go on the 2.5-mile track.
“What made it complex was the individual processes,” Marshall, a retired fire and rescue captain, said via email. “The crews had to handle a roll-over procedure, a vehicle extrication and driver extraction of a driver who is injured. These steps by themselves are low frequency events throughout a race season, [but] the on-track personnel handled each one in succession, as they are trained and had a positive outcome.
“The other area that makes an incident like this a little more complex is [the] span of control with the number of people operating on the incident scene, and the crews performed well.”
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Preparation and communication are crucial, Marshall added, and his and others’ experiences working in fire and rescue services enable them to respond to wrecks calmly and purposefully. He said he wasn’t scared, but simply concerned for Newman’s life.
NASCAR’s track services crew prepares for moments like this through training totaling 55 hours, 41 of which are hands-on and completed annually, Marshall noted. They further prepare with track-specific training about 60 days before an event, Bobo said, and all those rehearsals attempt to anticipate a huge variety of scenarios with the help of training cars.
“We bring out stock cars with fire pans under and will light them on fire,” Bobo said. “We will actually take people through practice extractions of cutting the windshields. … We’ll have our ER physicians practice procedures while upside down hanging in a car. So we do everything we can think of.”
Responding, investigating and adapting
Established safety systems worked as designed to save Newman, but NASCAR wants to guard against complacency. Earnhardt’s death two decades ago “accelerated” NASCAR’s effort to innovate and adjust, O’Donnell said.
“It took something that should have been proactively worked on, and we learned,” Newman said of Earnhardt’s accident. “And it was like, ‘OK, that’s it. That’s the last straw. We need to do something here.’ There’s no doubt in my mind that a lot of it is because of who it was, but that’s the way life works.”
Dale Earnhardt slammed into the wall while he getting hit by Ken Schrader in a crash that killed him during the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. (AP Photo/Bob Sweeten)
In the years following the legendary seven-time champion’s death, NASCAR made major adjustments to its safety rules, including drivers being required to wear full-face helmets, plus a head and neck restraint called the HANS device. The governing body also eventually mandated tracks install SAFER barriers designed to absorb the energy of a crash. More recently in 2015, NASCAR began requiring seven‑ or nine‑point restraints on seat belts to further restrict how much gravity can pull drivers out of their seats if the car is upside down.
“The culture is what Dale Earnhardt changed,” O’Donnell said. Since Earnhardt’s death, no drivers in NASCAR’s three national series have died as the result of a crash.
“Certainly, the HANS device and SAFER barriers were huge,” O’Donnell continued. “But it’s our ability to, each and every day, talk about technology, talk about safety and continue to have people in the industry approach us about those ideas versus just talking about how to make the car go faster.”
Prior to last year’s crash, Newman already had a significant impact on NASCAR safety with what’s known as the “Newman Bar.” After multiple scary wrecks at Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway involving Newman — plus his lobbying of NASCAR — a reinforcement was added to the roll cage in 2013 to further protect the driver.
Ryan Newman slides upside down on the track after crashing with Kevin Harvick at Talladega Superspeedway in 2009. (AP Photo/Mark Young)
Following an investigation into the 2020 Daytona 500 last-lap crash, NASCAR’s safety enhancements included mandating two additional roll bars and a reinforced driver’s seat window net and mounting, which is designed to keep the drivers and their body parts inside the car in the event of a crash.
“We’ve really had access to incredibly powerful new tools, new sensors and new analysis tools,” said Dr. John Patalak, NASCAR senior director of safety and engineering. “We’ve been able to capture more data. It makes us smarter, we can make better decisions and we always have different ongoing research safety projects. …
“Computer modeling is a really big advancement for us and will allow us to really dive deep into certain things that we were blind to in the past, that the crash test dummies just couldn’t tell us.”
For on-track first responders, resting roof training for an upside down car has been more widespread at NASCAR’s tracks, Bobo said, and new discoveries or safety developments are detailed at a safety and racing operation summit at the beginning of each year.
Looking ahead to NASCAR’s Next-Gen car — which was originally scheduled to debut this season but was pushed back a year because of COVID-19-related challenges — NASCAR senior vice president of racing development John Probst said there are several updates that are new to stock cars, including front- and rear-crash structures reinforced with foam.
Probst said more than 4,000 crash simulations have been completed for the new car. Later this year, with the help of the University of Nebraska, NASCAR will crash the car into a SAFER barrier to see how it holds up against the simulations, looking for new ways to improve the structure.
“When something like this has happened, the most productive emotion is curiosity,” Bobo said. “So we have been as curious as possible about everything that we’ve done. How can we do it better?”
Ryan Newman’s “luck ran out” in February on the final lap of the 2020 Daytona 500, when he was involved in a horrifying crash in the run to the finish line that sent him flipping through the air at nearly 200 miles per hour. Newman’s car skidded hundreds of feet upside down along the track and eventually came to rest, and the track safety and medical crew frantically worked to check on Newman’s condition and extract him from the car.
Newman was rushed to the hospital – and miraculously, Newman was able to walk out the hospital holding his daughters’ hands with only minor injuries two days later.
Newman returned to Daytona to race on the road course two weeks ago, but on Saturday night, Newman will test his luck again in a restrictor plate race at NASCAR’s most famous track. In an interview with Fox Sports, Newman said he never envisioned saying he felt happy to be alive before the accident occurred.
As NASCAR returns to the superspeedway, @RyanJNewman looks back on his terrifying Daytona 500 crash and how it has changed his life forever. pic.twitter.com/PoA1qAMa6H
“I never thought I would sit here and say I was happy to be alive, because I’ve been so blessed in so many ways. I’ve been lucky. And my luck ran out one day. And I’m thankful that I had just enough luck to be saved.
…. The tough part is just knowing what could have happened that day. Right? I mean… I was close. I was close. I mean the hole punch was there. The ticket was in somebody’s hand. They either missed, or what, but my ticket is still here.
Ryan Newman returned to Daytona International Speedway for the first time since his horrific Daytona 500 wreck in February.
For the first time since Ryan Newman’s horrific last-lap crash during the 2020 Daytona 500, the No. 6 Ford driver returned to Daytona International Speedway and got behind the wheel for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race.
Newman had the lead of NASCAR’s iconic season-opener in February as he and those chasing him came down the frontstretch. Ryan Blaney made contact with Newman from behind in an attempt to give the fellow Ford driver a push to the finish line.
But Newman turned instead, hit the outside wall and was slammed into by another car. He landed upside down, and it took several minutes for the emergency crews to get him out of the car and transport him to the nearby hospital.
Here is the final lap of the Daytona 500 in which Ryan Newman's car was flipped at the line.
So before the GoBowling 235 on Daytona’s road course, Newman took a moment to thank the track’s emergency and health care staff for helping save his life.
Newman said:
“Hey, everyone, just want to say a big thank you. This is a special day for me, a lot of it because of all the things that you guys did back in February. … Thank you for your support, not only for me personally, but all of the things that you do for all of us drivers. It goes a long way, and I wanted to say thank you from the deepest of my heart. Thank you.”
Also prior to Sunday’s race at Daytona, Newman spoke with NBC Sports about his return to the track for the first time since the Daytona 500 wreck. And, in an unsurprising moment for the 42-year-old driver, he made a joke.
When asked about his emotions returning to Daytona, Newman said:
“Ha, I hate to laugh and say it because I really am thankful of all the things I’ve done, but I don’t remember leaving the last time. So when I drove back in the tunnel today, that was kind of the special moment I shared with myself was — the last time I left here, it never registered. So I felt like I never left, and that’s why I’m back because I still feel like this is what I want to do and love to do.
“And I’m blessed to have Guaranteed Rate on our car for this weekend and to be back to be able to do it. There’s no guarantees in life, and that proved — or almost proved that that’s the case. And I don’t know that I could have done anything different in the moment. I still don’t know that I did anything wrong. It’s just, that was part of racing.”
