Stewart, Newman To Backup Cars

During final practice, Stewart Haas Racing driver, Ryan Newman, blew a tire and triggered an accident that collected his teammate and owner, Tony Stewart. Both will go to backup cars, and will start from the rear of the field of the Daytona 500.

Newman said he felt a slight vibration in his right rear as exited Turn 1. Stewart was behind Newman pushing him. When the tire blew, Newman spun and Stewart got into him. Sam Hornish Jr. got a small piece of the accident, but it appeared that his car was okay. Newman and Stewart slid into the outside wall, and then back down the track. Other cars avoided them.

Stewart was angry with Goodyear for what determined to be faulty tires.  He said:

So it’s the same thing everybody has been talking about all week. It’s the same stuff that we always talk about every year — the failures that Goodyear has. I think that’s part of their marketing campaign. The more we talk about it, the more press they get. I think they forget that it’s supposed to be in a good way, not a bad way.

For its part, Goodyear’s director of worldwide racing, Stu Grant, said that Newman’s accident was caused by “a foreign object that came off one of the cars.” 

It’s obviously something that was on the race track. It could have been something that had fallen off one of the cars ahead of him. It could have been something that laid on the pavement for a while, and as the cars went by it moved it to a configuration where it could puncture a tire. We see a lot of those kinds of cases.

NASCAR Suspends Testing For 2009

NASCAR announced that it will suspend testing in all of its series in 2009 in an effort to help teams save money.

As part of the new policy, teams will not be allowed to test at any track that holds a NASCAR sanctioned event in the three major series and two regional series.

Goodyear will still conduct its tire tests, and NASCAR will allow testing in extrem situations like the disasterous race and Indianapolis Motor Speedway. 

Reaction was mixed for the ban, some drivers praised it while others didn’t like the idea.

The move is could save teams as much as $1.5 million per car per year.

Fellows Wins Rain-Shortened NAPA Auto Parts 200

Ron Fellows was in the right place at the right time; leading the NAPA Auto Parts 200 when the race was called due to rain, earning the victory at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, Canada, in JR Motorsports’ No. 5 Chevy.

Fellows took advantage of Marcos Ambrose’s pit road speeding penatly to earn the lead.

History was also made, when NASCAR called a caution and teams switched to rain tires, and added a windshield wiper, for the first points-paying race run on grooved Goodyear rain tires.

Top 5: Fellows, Patrick Carpentier, Ambrose, Ron Hornaday, and Boris Said.

Carl Edwards, Jason Leffler, Greg Biffle, Clint Bowyer, and Scott Wimmer finished sixth through 10th respectively.

Notables: Brad Keselowski (12th), David Ragan (13th), Jacques Villeneuve (15th), Joey Logano (16th), David Reutimann (18th), Max Papis (20th), and Scott Pruett (22nd).

Villeneuve and Logano both had trouble seeing, as not all teams added windshield wipers, both wrecked under caution. Villeneuve was running sixth when he ran into the back of another car.