Hornish Comes Home As Top Rookie, Top Penske Car

AVONDALE, Ariz. — Ryan Newman really “smoked ’em” in Saturday night’s Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix Int’l Raceway. He smoked ’em so bad, it brought out the red flag because of oil and other fluids that make the race track as slippery as an ice-skating rink.
“We lost a front seal,” Newman said. “It’s the same thing that happened to us in Bristol. It’s disappointing. That’s two times in the first eight races that we had the same problem. Our engine company needs to get their stuff together.
“The motor still runs fine. It just pumps oil out the front-end and it gets on the headers and smokes real bad. I apologize for what I did to the race track, but that’s all I had to work with.”
After starting on the pole, Newman finished last Saturday night.

• Jeff Burton’s sixth-place finish solidified his hold on first place in the Sprint Cup standings. He leads Kyle Busch by 80 points after the first eight races this season.
“It was a good finish for us, but we are missing something at this track,” Burton said. “I am missing something at this track. It has been a thorn in our side. We were going to run 11th, 12th or something like that, but Scott (Miller) made a great call and got us a sixth.
“We will certainly take it. I am disappointed in how we ran. I am disappointed in myself. We are just missing something. We had no damage to the car when we spun in the oil from the 12 (Newman) when it blew up. We were probably pretty lucky there was no damage. We got a little dirt- track racing in, but it worked out for us. There was a little bit of luck involved there.”

• Dale Earnhardt, Jr. hoped to be the driver to give Hendrick Motorsports its first win this season, but it was Jimmie Johnson that gave the team the checkered flag.
“I am tired man,” Earnhardt said afterwards. “I have to congratulate Jimmie; he had such a super car. We used some of the things they were liking about their setup; we used it yesterday afternoon. That helped our car a lot...a lot of good information going back and forth.
“I hope Rick (Hendrick) is happy about the win. I am happy about it. I am glad that we got one. That usually means there is a lot more to come. I am so proud of my team. My guys had some great pit stops. We beat some guys off pit road and got to lead some laps.”

• Sam Hornish, Jr. was the highest-finishing Raybestos Rookie with a 20th-place finish. He is a former winner at PIR in an IndyCar back in 2001.
“It was rough for sure, but we didn’t have that great of a car, but we just kind of did what we needed to do today,” Hornish said. “We adjusted on it and made it better and looking at the scoreboard there to be the top finishing of the teammates, that’s the first time that’s ever happened. I’ve got to look at that and be a little bit happy.
“I know that Kurt (Busch) and Ryan (Newman) both had problems today and it didn’t work out that good, but even that can make me feel a little bit better right now. I was just real happy. 
“I’ve said in the past that we didn’t feel like we were keeping up with the track. We were tight at the beginning and we couldn’t make enough adjustments to keep it from getting more tight. Today we kind of kept up with the track. We didn’t go on the good side, but we kept up with the track so I was real happy with that. Hopefully we’ll build on this and continue to move forward and get some better finishes in the future.” 
 
• Dario Franchitti had his best qualifying effort of the season when he lined up 21st, but he finished 32nd on Saturday night.
“Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you’re unlucky and tonight we got unlucky,” Franchitti said. “We came to pit road about three laps before that yellow came out and that put us an extra lap down and that was that. We were two laps down instead of being one. We were running top-15 times pretty much all night, but we just got put those two laps down and that was it.”

• Another driver who started up front only to finish in the back was Elliott Sadler, who started second and finished 41st with engine failure.
“We lost something in the engine,” Sadler said. “I’m not sure what really happened. It’s a shame. This Stanley Tools Dodge was the best car that we’ve had all year. I was riding out front in the top 10 and just trying to make it to the end. I feel sorry for my guys; they worked their butts off on pit stops and gave me good track position. It just wasn’t meant to be tonight. I like this new race car. It qualified good and felt good tonight. It gives us some high hopes going to Darlington.”

• David Reutimann fought his way back into the top 35 in points with an 18th-place finish Saturday night.
“It’s great to go to the next race and just worry about racing,” Reutimann said. “We’ll go there and do that. All we had to do was finish the last couple of races and we’d be ‘off to see the wizard’ and be in good shape. We’ll take them one at a time. All I know is we don’t have to worry about (qualifying). We can act like a regular race team now and make our car better for race runs.  It’s going to be a lot of fun — I’m looking forward to that.”