Newman stays behind Marlin in the standings

HAMPTON, Ga. -- After just one practice, professional race car drivers can tell you quite accurately where they might finish the following Sunday.

Barring the extraneous factors that might occur during competition, a driver knows pretty well where his car should wind up.

			Ryan Newman

That said, Ryan Newman knew he had a top-10 car Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. And despite a slew of sideways slides in the corners, he got that top-10, finishing 10th in the MBNA America 500.

"We got our top-10 - that's kind of what we were asking for," said Newman, driver of the No. 12 Alltell Ford. "We finished with a top-10 run and I think we had a top-10 race car. It's good when you can come home and complete those days."

Newman started on the outside of the front row, and took the lead from pole-sitter Bill Elliott even before the first lap had ended. He led the first 15 laps, and remaining among the leaders virtually the entire day. After several near-miss saves throughout the day, he was in contention for a top-five late before his car went away in the waning laps.

			Ryan Newman follows teammate Rusty Wallace into Turn 1.

"I wished we could have done better; I know we could have done a little bit better," Newman said. "We just missed the balance there a little bit on that last run. I lost two or three spots there at the end. We chased it a little bit there at the start.

"We struggled back. We had a real bad vibration on one set of tires and got to come in 40 laps later. We fixed that and went back out everything felt pretty well. We went to the back and worked our way back up. It just wasn't far enough."

Newman entered the weekend in second position in the championship point standings, ranking only 75 points behind leader Sterling Marlin. Following Sunday's 10th-place effort, he maintained the second-place ranking and gained one point on Marlin.

"I'm definitely proud of this team," he said. "It shows a great effort."