Team: No. 6 Acronis Ford Mustang
Crew Chief: Scott Graves
Twitter: @Roush6Team, @RoushFenway and @RyanJNewman
Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race – Saturday, Aug. 17 at 7:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM Channel 90
ADVANCE NOTES
Newman at Bristol Motor Speedway
· Newman will make his 36th Cup start at Bristol Saturday night. In 35 prior events, Newman has 19 top-10 finishes with two top-fives and an average finish of 15.5.
· Newman’s best result at the half-mile track came back in 2004 when he finished second. He also crossed the line fifth in 2015. In the past 10 races at Bristol, Newman has only one finish outside the top-15 with six top-10s.
· In the last four second Bristol races alone, Newman has two top-10s with an average finish of 14th.
· Newman has three career Cup poles at The World’s Fastest Half Mile and an average start of 12.2 He led the field to green in 2003, 2004 and again in 2011.
· Newman also has an additional nine starts in the Xfinity and Truck series combined, winning in Xfinity action back in 2005. He earned the pole for the 2006 race and finished 10th or better in five Xfinity starts there. He also started from the top spot in 2009 in the No. 2 truck before finishing fourth.
· Additionally, Newman has seven starts at Bristol in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, where he won twice (2010, 2011).
Scott Graves at Bristol Motor Speedway
· Graves will call his eighth MENCS race at Bristol on Saturday. In seven prior events, Graves’ best finish came with Newman back in April, a ninth-place result.
· Graves has called seven Xfinity Series events at Bristol dating back to 2012, recording one top five (Chris Buescher – 2015) and two additional top-10s (Buescher – 2014, Suarez – 2016).
Last Time at Bristol
Newman drove his Wyndham Rewards Ford to a ninth-place finish in the April race at Bristol this past spring, his first top-10 of the season. After lining up 11th, Newman picked up his best stage finish of the season of third to end stage two. He went on to restart the race fifth for a 20-lap shootout before finishing ninth, his first of three-straight top-10s during the month of April.
QUOTE WORTHY
Newman on racing at Bristol:
“We’re coming down to the wire in the playoff picture, which puts an extra emphasis on these next three races. Bristol is a track we feel like we can excel at based off both our run there, as well as the speed Ricky (Stenhouse) had back in April. The night race at Bristol is always full of excitement and we’re ready to unload in our Acronis Ford to see what we can do.”
Tracking the Playoff Hunt
· With three races to go in the regular season and hunt for the playoffs, Newman sits 15th in points, 16 ahead of the cutoff. Clint Bowyer is 10 back in 16th, while Daniel Suarez is the next-closest in 17th, 16 behind Newman.
On the Car
The Global leader in Cyber Protection, Acronis, makes its second appearance aboard Ryan Newman’s No. 6 Ford Mustang this weekend at Bristol. It is the second of three races for Acronis as the primary partner on the No. 6 (Watkins Glen, Dover II).
About Acronis
Acronis leads the world in cyber protection — solving safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS) challenges with innovative backup, security, disaster recovery, and enterprise file sync and share solutions that run in hybrid cloud environments: on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edge. Enhanced by AI technologies and blockchain-based data authentication, Acronis protects all data, in any environment, including physical, virtual, cloud, mobile workloads, and applications. With 500,000 business customers, and a powerful worldwide community of Acronis API-enabled service providers, resellers, and ISV partners, Acronis is trusted by 79 of the top 100 most valuable brands and has over 5 million customers. With dual headquarters in Switzerland and Singapore, Acronis is a global organization with offices worldwide and customers and partners in over 190 countries. Learn more at acronis.com.
Recapping Michigan
A great strategy call combined with some late race fortune allowed Newman to climb from 20th up to 12th in the closing laps of Sunday’s race at Michigan. As cars begin to fade due to a race on fuel mileage, Newman was good to the end thanks to a key strategy call and gained valuable points to exit Michigan +16 in the playoff picture.
