Newman's confidence grows with return to Dover

DOVER, Del. -- Ryan Newman has had a smile on his face for most of the weekend. That wasn't the case here in the spring, or last week at New Hampshire for that matter.

Ryan Newman

Still, despite the pit-road miscue and subsequent crash here in the spring that ended a good run and the engine problem at New Hampshire that put him in a big hole in the Chase for the Nextel Cup, the grin remains.

"We've always liked Dover," Newman said. "We've always performed well here."

Newman won both Nextel Cup Series events here in 2003 and was a contender for a third consecutive win before he spun entering pit road on a green-flag stop. During the caution, Newman ran out of fuel and then got caught up in a multicar crash on the restart.

Three months later, the confidence and the smile are back.

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"I think we definitely have a lot of confidence this year," Newman said. "We haven't lacked in that department. I think the department we've lacked in is just pure performance."

Many drivers in the Nextel Cup Series would love to have Newman's performance this season. The No. 12 bunch has a dozen top-10 finishes this season and a win at Michigan in late June.

Still, there have been problems, like a 31st-place finish in the Daytona 500, a 39th-lace finish as the defending race winner at Texas, an engine failure in the Coca-Cola 600 that left him 35th and accidents at Pocono in June, Chicago in July and Indianapolis in August.

The biggest blow may have come last week, however, when the engine on his No. 12 Dodge expired, killing what appeared to be a top-five run at New Hampshire. After starting the day just 45 points out of the Nextel Cup point lead, he finished it 136 points out.

Still, Newman said he left Loudon smiling.

"We found out what happened. Something broke on the engine," he said.

"I was really happy because we were running so good. We legitimately had a good shot at winning that race. We've struggled this year to have a good shot to win the race and we haven't had dominant cars like we have."

Newman may have a dominant car this weekend. He followed up his second-place qualifying effort with the third-fastest run in Saturday's final practice.

More reason to smile.

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"I like banked racetracks, first of all," said Newman. "Concrete doesn't change a lot as far as balance or stuff. So when you get a car that's right, it stays right for the day and you can usually come back the next race whether it's three months later and do the same thing all over again.

"Once it starts clicking, it keeps clicking."

Newman hopes that clicking translates to clicks up the Nextel Cup standings come Sunday afternoon and beyond.

"I think we've got a good chance," Newman said. "I think our team has been really strong the last 10 races, specifically the last 15 races.

"We're (136) points behind the leader right now. There's nine races to go. We can get all those 136 points back basically in one race, so and we've got nine to work with. I think our chances are good."