Newman getting feel for new team, new teammate

There is no Preseason Thunder this year at Daytona International Speedway, but that didn't prevent Ryan Newman from climbing into his new No. 39 Chevrolet and tooling around a Florida track on Wednesday.

With NASCAR eliminating all testing this offseason at tracks where sanctioned events are held during the year, Newman and his new teammate/owner at Stewart-Haas Racing, Tony Stewart, spent Wednesday familiarizing themselves as much as possible with their new Sprint Cup rides for 2009 at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway.

Private Ryan

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The season-opening Daytona 500 looms a month away, and Newman is the defending champion of NASCAR's most prestigious event. But he will not defend in the No. 12 Penske Racing Dodge that he drove to Victory Lane in that race last season -- and Newman admitted that will seem a little weird.

"I think the strange moment will be going to the Daytona 500 Experience [prior to the actual race for a ceremony with fans celebrating last year's victory] and being part of that and pulling the old car out. That will be, I guess, the cutting of the umbilical cord of sorts," Newman said.

This will be Newman's 10th season driving in the Cup Series. The first nine were all spent with Penske Racing, nearly all of them behind the wheel of the No. 12.

The Daytona 500 victory was the 13th of his career, but Newman struggled as last season progressed. By late in the summer, he had decided he would join the newly formed Stewart-Haas organization and make the switch from driving a Dodge to a Chevrolet.

Newman said that's what makes days like Wednesday so important for both him and Stewart, who left Joe Gibbs Racing to help from the new team and will be switching back to a Chevrolet after one season in a Toyota. Newman said the first thing he and Stewart and their respective crew chiefs need to accomplish is to make sure they're all communicating on the same page when they talk about what their teams need to do to make the cars go faster.

"For me it's important to understand what [Stewart's] balance feels like, and vice versa; for [crew chiefs] Darian Grubb and Tony Gibson to work together; to understand when Tony says the car is loose that it's drivable or undrivable for me, and vice versa," Newman said. "Those are the things that we'll work on from a communication standpoint and from a teamwork standpoint within the drivers and the crew chiefs and the teams." (Continued)