Ryan Newman finished ninth Saturday night in the Showtime Southern 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Darlington Raceway where he scored his second-consecutive top-10 finish.
Newman continued his slow but steady rise in the points standings as he left Darlington in 14th place. He gained one spot and now has 1,280 points, 38 points outside the top-12.
Even with an ill-handling racecar that hampered the No. 39 Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) team throughout the 367-lap race, the team grabbed their fourth top-10 in the last six races.
"We had a good qualifying spot with the Haas Automation Chevy, and we had great pit stops all night on pit road and that really kept us in the game," Newman said after the race. "I have to thank all the guys on the Haas Automation crew for that. It wasn't the finish we had hoped to get, but it was a solid points night for us and that is a credit to what our team did in the pits tonight."
Newman started sixth in the 61st running of the legendary Southern 500 and felt he had a car that could contend for the win, but "The Track Too Tough to Tame" lived up to its name as Newman battled a variety of handling issues that saw his racecar go from one extreme to the next - too tight on one run and then too loose on the following run.
Newman's Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Old Spice/Office Depot Chevrolet Impala for SHR, finished 23rd.
Denny Hamlin won the Showtime Southern 500 to score his 11th career Sprint Cup victory, his third of the season and his first at Darlington. Hamlin swept the weekend with a victory Friday night in the Nationwide Race.
"I can't tell you how excited I am about us winning right now because I know what our team is capable of by the time we hit Chase time. We're running pretty much last year's cars for the most part. We're just kind of easing our way into it," Hamlin said after the Sprint Cup race.
"We didn't expect to have the success," Hamlin continued. "We thought we could contend for race wins, maybe get one here or there the first 12. We really wanted to come on right after Indy, was our goal, to turn the light switch on and really go for it. We'll see what happens."
Jamie McMurray finished 1.908 seconds behind Hamlin in the second spot, while Kurt Busch, Jeff Gordon and Juan Pablo Montoya rounded out the top-five. Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, Jeff Burton, Newman and Brian Vickers comprised the remainder of the top-10.
The next event on the Sprint Cup schedule is the May 16 Autism Speaks 400 at Dover (Del.) International Speedway. The race starts at 1 p.m. EDT with live coverage provided by FOX beginning with its pre-race show at noon.
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