NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Federated Auto Parts 400

Topics:  Federated Auto Parts 400

Ryan Newman
September 7, 2013

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

KERRY THARP: Ryan, I know it's a difficult time. Just talk about the run out there this evening, anything else you might want to say.
RYAN NEWMAN: We did everything we needed to up until the last caution. I'm not sure exactly what unfolded there. We still had the opportunity to win it on pit road and we didn't. Coming from 6th to 3rd in a couple laps is not bad. But we had to win, so it's disappointing.
Didn't expect to make up for everything we didn't get in the first 25 in the last race, but we were in position. We did everything we needed to with the exception of the pit stop. I'm not sure what happened with the 15 on that caution. Obviously we were in a position to take that second wild card with two wins.
Nevertheless, I still feel like we lost it on pit road. It's disappointing. We'll go on. But just thank Quicken Loans and all our sponsors to give us the opportunity to go out and do what we do and we got more to go.
KERRY THARP: Questions.

Q. Ryan, I know you can't be inside Clint Bowyer's head, but a teammate of Martin Truex did that?
RYAN NEWMAN: They are teammates. I don't know if he looked at the scoring pylon, knew I was leading. It doesn't matter. If that was the case, I'll find out one way or the other. At the same time we still had the opportunity to make our own destiny and win it on pit road, and we didn't.
That being said, we're out.

Q. Ryan, you took four tires. Whose call was that? In hindsight does it matter?
RYAN NEWMAN: We came down pit road first. Carl came off pit road second. We should have been at least second at that point. We didn't do our job on pit road. Four tires won the race. We were the first car to be in position on four tires and we didn't get the job done.
KERRY THARP: Ryan, thanks for coming in.


Q. You were in and then the caution fell. How do you describe what's going through your mind right now?
RYAN NEWMAN: I mean, I told Matt when we came into this race that we couldn't make up everything we've missed in the first 25.
Now, winning would have changed everything and that last caution definitely hurt us, but we got killed on pit road, there's no doubt about that. Carl and those guys beat us on four tires. The guys that took two were just doing some strategy, but we should have been able to come off pit road first and come off pit road first if we were a championship contending team. We needed a championship contending pit crew, and we didn't have that tonight.