Richard Childress Racing driver finished second in 2014's final standings
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- His team "stepped up" in 2014 and Ryan Newman said Thursday that he sees no reason the Richard Childress Racing No. 31 team can't continue to not only improve, but challenge for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.
"There was a point right around May when we got caught looking in the wrong direction and just were behind," Newman said during the fourth and final day of this year's Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour presented by Technocom.
"They did an awesome job of continually stepping up, bringing better and more competitive pieces to the race track. Everyone at RCR stepped up. … It was an awesome thing to be a part of."
While he did not win a race in '14, thus ending a four-year run of making the trip to Victory Lane once each season, consistency throughout the bulk of the year helped Newman qualify for the 10-race Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and he was one of only four drivers to advance into the final, championship-determining round at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Although he came up just short of the title, eventually finishing second to Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick, the effort further convinced the 37-year-old that the move to RCR prior to the '14 season had been the right one.
And the team, led by crew chief Luke Lambert, should only get better.
"No reason for it not to," said Newman. "Even though there were no (wins) in the win column, we achieved some amazing things for a first-year organization … no reason we can’t keep that incline going."
The potential for success, he said, was there from the beginning, "but I didn't think it would explode the way it did.
"I think we all saw gunpowder laying on the floor, but we didn't know who was going to light it, when it was going to light and how much of it was going to go off. I think every bit of it went off, and then some."
Changes to the rules package for 2015, the use of new technology to officiate pit road and a lack of testing have raised questions about how the upcoming NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season will play out.
That being the case, Lambert said RCR, as well as teams across the board, will be relying heavily on the in-house tools and technology at their disposal to get a base for the new year.
"From what we're seeing, the speeds aren't going to be dramatically different," he said. "We're expecting to see really good racing, but that's what we'll have to wait until Atlanta (where the rules package will first come into play) to see."
Having less horsepower and downforce won't exactly be new, Newman said, but instead will be "a return to where we were a few years ago."
The difference now, he said, will come from the static ride height rule that was put into play in '14.
"Now I think the cars will be more competitive in dirty air whereas they weren't then," Newman said. "They had less downforce but they had (higher) static heights so whenever you got them in dirty air, they wanted to come up and disconnect themselves from the race track. Every comment was 'the car is out of the race track, all four tires aren’t working for me.' I think as we get back to that level of downforce with the static ride height and the amount of underbody downforce, the racing will be … better.
"Goodyear still has to provide the ultimate tire for every situation. And that's not easy because those situations can change. …That is a huge task for them, but that's the ultimate answer.
"I've always said the tires are the only thing that touches the race track from my car, so it has to be the connecting device to make the racing as great as it can possibly be."