NASCAR's Ryan Newman Talks About Talladega

For this Sunday's Amp Energy 500 at Talladega Super Speedway in Talladega, Ala., RYAN NEWMAN spoke to the media Tuesday from the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C. This will be his seventh race in the 2009 chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

Newman drives the No. 39 U.S. Army Chevrolet. He is seventh in series points going into Talladega and has had a lot of good runs at this track in the past, including four top 5 finishes and seven Top 10 finishes in 15 starts.

The first question comes from a fans via NASCAR's Twitter account. Micah, from Fort Worth Texas, wants to know that after all the great success of Stewart Haas Racing this year, would RYAN NEWMAN perhaps one day want to jump into the driver/owner ranks and give it a try?

RYAN NEWMAN: That's a good question. But, honestly, that's not one of my goals. I think Tony's done a great job and Gene Haas as well as far as laying ground work and everything else in the shop. Done a great job. I don't know that you could ever try to repeat that or duplicate that. Other people have tried even before Tony.

So I don't think that that is something that I'm interested in. It's kind of like when things are on a grand scale, when they're good they're great. But when they're bad, they're really bad. And I don't have any will to have those potential bad headaches.

Q. Ryan, I'm wondering, what can NASCAR do to fix the problem at Talladega? The drivers obviously don't like driving in packs, but that's due to restrictor plates. But at the same time NASCAR doesn't want the cars flying into the stands anymore. So is there anything in your view that they can do to fix that issue?

RYAN NEWMAN: I know they've made one big step and that's to reduce the restrictor plate size to slow the cars down so we're less likely to get airborne.

I know the Speedway has made improvements with respect to catch fans and things like that. But ultimately we don't want to get to that situation.

Realistically, the drivers, as NASCAR has evolved to restrictor plate tracks, have changed the way we drive. There will be times when we single - file out and there will be times when we're four - wide/four - deep for the whole pack at times.

So it's just a matter of excitement and strategy and the timing of those things in conjunction with what lap we're on and what there is to expect before the end of the race, because I didn't expect the last race there to be two cars, two groups of two cars pushing each other and may the best two - team win. I never thought that would be a Talladega race. Realistically, you never know what to expect. But I know the restrictor plate change is a big thing.

And as I said, as NASCAR has evolved, you never know what you're going to get with the drivers and how their styles change.

Q. Ryan, Mark Martin recently described preparation, compared Earnhardt, Sr. and Jimmie Johnson. He said Jimmie is technical and he writes things down. Earnhardt didn't take notes, just piled into the thing and drove it like an animal, that's his quote. You're probably the most analytical of drivers, with your degree and everything, how would you describe your approach and how do you think you fit in between a studious Jimmie and jump in there, pile in their car, Dale Earnhardt, Sr.?

RYAN NEWMAN: It's like any other sport. Every driver has their little way of doing things, whether it's Senior's style or Jimmie Johnson style or Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart style or Labonte style, everybody's different. And you have to do what fits you to be the best you can be, to be the most successful in your own mind, to put it down on paper the way it's going to be or how you are trying to project what it is you want to do. And some guys are off the cuff and some guys have to lay it out. And everybody's different, is my point.

So to me I wouldn't compare myself to either. I kind of do my own thing. I have an engineering degree as a background, but I wouldn't say that distinctively drives what I do inside the race car or out of it.

Q. Ryan, I see at Charlotte you were asked about your expectations for this season. And I think you said you weren't really sure how it was going to turn out. It's turned out obviously pretty well. I'm curious what your expectations are for next season.

RYAN NEWMAN: Well, the one thing that I would say for sure is I feel like we should be able to expand upon this season, 2009, and take the relationships that we've built and start building better and faster race cars and things like that, because of the things that we've learned together as a team and what Tony Gibson and I have learned, what he's learned about the way I like to drive a car and the way I learned from things from him and how he likes to adjust on the race car.

So just being able to sharpen our pencil, per se, and shine things up a little bit, put a little polish on them and just be better than we are in all respects, from the pit crew side, from the team side, mechanically and performance - wise, what