Newman hopes hot streak continues at Sonoma race (cont'd)

He has double the poles (four to two), more top fives (three to two) and one less top 10 (six to seven) in 15 races than he achieved all of last season in 36.

"I can't really quantify it, I can just tell you from a team standpoint the guys are doing a good job of preparing the racecars," Newman said. "The cars are faster, which makes my job easier."

Newman might not be able to tell you exactly how, but he's certainly enjoying the results.

"I think the most important part is just from a mental standpoint," Newman said. "My confidence in driving the car, [crew chief] Michael Nelson's confidence in my reports about what the car is doing and the changes we've made to make the car faster have been the biggest thing.

"My confidence to be able to hit my marks and drive the car the way I want to drive it for that extra tenth of a second is really big."

And he has no reason to believe it won't continue this weekend at Infineon, where he and Penske teammate Kurt Busch finished second and fifth, respectively, last season.

"In my opinion, the COT has been better on the road course as far as testing goes compared to the COT on the short track so I don't think it's going to be that much different [than the standard cars]," Newman said. "I think the biggest reason why, is the COT is a non offset car, so it's more conducive to road-course racing."

Newman cited his teammates' cooperation as a big part of both teams' success, which has resulted in them sitting 15th and 16th in the standings, 11 races before the cutoff for the Chase.

"I think the third part of [our improvement] is the two teams are really working good together," Newman said. "They've never worked better together, I can tell you that -- and I think there's still room for the two teams to grow working together.

"That's been a big part of our improvement as well."