The Official Ryan Newman Website

Round 5 of 36 - Food City 500 -

Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway

Car No.: 39 - Haas Automation Chevrolet Impala

Teammate:  Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing

Primary Team Members:

Over-The-Wall Crew Members:

Road Crew Members:

Food City 500 Car - Chassis No. 39-516:

This chassis saw action on both concrete racetracks - Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and Dover (Del.) International Speedway - last season for the No. 39 team. In four races during the 2009 season, the chassis never finished outside of the top-10. The car finished seventh and sixth at Bristol and eighth and 10^th at Dover, respectively. Over the winter, Tony Gibson & Company updated the chassis in preparation for the 2010 season. This weekend's Food City 500 marks the first race this year for the chassis.

 Bristol Motor Speedway Notes of Interest:

• The Food City 500 will mark Newman's 301^st career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series start and his 17^th career Sprint Cup start at Bristol. Newman's best finish at the .533-mile bullring was a second-place effort, which came during the August night race in 2004. That is Newman's only top-five finish at Bristol. The driver of the No. 39 Chevrolet also has two pole positions and nine top-10 finishes in 16 starts at Bristol.

• The Turning Point - For Newman & Company, it's easy to point to last year's spring race at Bristol as the turning point for a struggling No. 39 team. After suffering through a series of misfortunes in the first four races of the season, the No. 39 team entered Bristol teetering on the verge of being outside of the top-35 in points. The team rallied and started the weekend by claiming the outside pole for the grueling 500-lap race. That momentum set the stage for the team's first top-10 run of the season, as Newman led 25 laps en route to a seventh-place finish. It marked the beginning of a run for the No. 39 team that saw Newman post seven top-10 finishes in the next 10 races and move from 27^th to fourth in the championship point standings.

• Newman has finished either sixth or seventh in four of his last five starts at Bristol.

• Short Track Success for the No. 39 in 2009 - The short tracks of the Sprint Cup Series seemed to be a sure fit for Newman and the No. 39 team last season. At tracks under one mile in length - Bristol, Martinsville (Va.) Speedway and Richmond (Va.) International Raceway - Newman never finished outside of the top-10.

• Bristol is Where it All Began for this ‘Rocketman' - Newman earned his nickname "Rocketman" during a qualifying run at Bristol Motor Speedway. It was March 21, 2003 - Newman's third Cup outing at the track known as the bullring. Newman turned a blistering fast lap in qualifying - clocking in at 128.709 mph (14.908 seconds). The quick lap set a new track record, which Newman still holds today. It also led to his famous "Rocketman" nickname. "I'm not really sure if it was Mike Joy or Larry Mac (McReynolds), but one of them said during the live broadcast of qualifying that it looked like I rocketed off the corner," Newman said. "And they may have gone on to say it was like I was a ‘Rocketman.' I'm not really sure, but I do know it stuck. From that moment on, people started calling me ‘Rocketman,' or using ‘Rocketman' in their headlines about me. So that's how it happened."

• The South Bend, Ind., native has two poles at Bristol - the track record-setting pole in 2003 and a pole in 2004. Newman has 45 career Sprint Cup poles, tying him for 11^th on the all-time career pole list with the legendary Buck Baker. Newman is third among active fulltime Sprint Cup drivers behind Jeff Gordon (68) and Mark Martin (49). His last pole came on Oct. 23, 2009, at Martinsville Speedway eight races ago.

• Newman has seven NASCAR Nationwide Series starts at Bristol, and those seven starts have netted one pole (2006), one win (2005), two top-five and five top-10 finishes. Newman won the fall race at the concrete oval in 2005, leading 114 of 252 laps.

• Last August, Newman scored the pole for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Bristol. Newman drove the No. 4 Kevin Harvick, Inc., entry to a fourth-place finish in his only Truck Series start at the Tennessee short track.

• Numerology and Newman's No. 39 - The No. 39 has been lucky for Newman throughout his racing career. His first major USAC win came in May 1997, when he drove the No. 39 Midget car to victory in the 52^nd Night Before the 500 race at O'Reilly Raceway Park near Indianapolis, the day before that year's Indianapolis 500. It was the biggest win of Newman's career at the time, and one he credits with putting him on the racing map. In 2005, Newman piloted the No. 39 in Nationwide competition for Penske Racing, and he won six of the nine races he entered and finished outside of the top-three only once. The No. 39 has never been to victory lane in Sprint Cup competition.

• In 2009, Newman scored two poles - Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway in May, and Martinsville in October - five top-five and 15 top-10 finishes en route to a berth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup Championship and a ninth-place points finish.

• Setting the Standard - Newman, along with teammate and SHR co-owner Stewart, led all Sprint Cup drivers in laps completed in 2009 in only the team's first season. Newman and Stewart each completed 10,468 of a possible 10,492 laps over the 36-race points-paying season - an incredible 99.8 percent. They failed to complete just 24 laps and they both finished all but one race - the fall event at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.

• Newman has a career total of 13 wins, 45 poles, 68 top-fives and 121 top-10 finishes in 300 Sprint Cup starts. His most recent Sprint Cup win came 75 races ago in the 50^th running of the Daytona 500 in February 2008, which ended a winless streak of 81 races that dated back to the 2005 event at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon.

Ryan Newman's History at Bristol Motor Speedway:

†Qualifying cancelled due to weather, starting position set via car owner points.

×Race length extended due to green-white-checker finish.