#39-Ryan Newman qualified 23rd for the Ford 400, but he won’t know what getting to run in the first 20 minutes of Friday’s only Sprint Cup practice would mean until race day, because thanks to an apparent miscommunication, Newman broke the transmission in his Stewart-Haas Racing Chevy while still in the garage and missed almost the first quarter of practice. The incident occurred when about half a dozen cars, including Newman’s, were misdirected to the wrong gate to get from the Sprint Cup garage to pit road. Newman declined to discuss the issue, but his crew chief, Tony Gibson, explained. “When the race track sends everybody out, normally that gate [at the start/finish end of the garage] is open,” Gibson said. “Well, they had it blocked, so they were shipping everybody down between the garages [to a gate further up the back of pit road], where they were lined up. But then they locked that gate and made us go back [through the garage to the original gate].”
Greg Biffle explained there were no NASCAR officials at the usual gate when he got there, and a track security guard waved him up to the other gate, where he lined up behind Jamie McMurray, Kevin Harvick and in front of Newman. A NASCAR official then let McMurray onto pit road but stopped Harvick. Biffle drove around Harvick and did a “three-point turn” to make the right-hand shift into the opening under the pit suites to get back into the garage — and back in line for practice. Harvick then put his car into reverse and abruptly backed up, almost hitting Newman, who had started to pull up behind him. “Trying to get everybody to come around and through that hole wasn’t going to happen,” Gibson said. “Guys were backing-up into other guys, so we put it in reverse to back-up in a hurry to keep Harvick from hitting us and it broke the transmission. We don’t use reverse a lot and it’s a lot thinner than our primary gears.” Newman immediately took his car to its garage stall, where the crew spent about the first 20 minutes of practice changing the transmission. However, the lower qualifying position aside, Newman will not be penalized for the transmission change — which, if it occurred at the wrong point of the weekend, would have sent his car to the rear for the start. “NASCAR was good about it, [Sprint Cup director John] Darby and them, and they let us change it without a penalty,” Gibson said. “Darby said it wouldn’t have been a penalty because it was before practice, but he said under the circumstances it was their fault — not NASCAR but the race track kind of screwed up — so NASCAR was nice enough to work with us.”(NASCAR.com)(11-20-2010)
