Sprint Cup News Briefs — Engine Malfunction Forces Newman to Rear of Field for Thursday’s Qualifying Race, McMurray Suffers Practice Crash
By Bram • Feb 11th, 2009 • Category: NASCAR, News, Notes
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Feb. 11, 2009) — Ryan Newman’s No. 39 U.S. Army Chevrolet suffered an engine malfunction in today’s (Wednesday) first practice session at Daytona International Speedway.
The team was forced to change engines for the afternoon practice session, and under NASCAR rules, an engine change will require Newman to start Thursday’s Gatorade Duel 150-mile qualifying race from the rear of the field. He was scheduled to start the second 150-miler from the outside pole. The engine change will not affect the Daytona 500 starting order.
“Something broke in the engine,” said Newman, the defending Daytona 500 champion. “I’m not really sure what. Obviously the horsepower has been great in qualifying and it felt strong out there. I was just coming up through the gears and getting up to speed and something let go. It’s unfortunate. But these guys have another bullet they can bolt in and we’ll be good to go.”
Jamie McMurray, driver of the No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion, was involved in a practice accident during the second practice session today at Daytona International Speedway. He spoke about what happened.
JAMIE MCMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion – “It doesn’t look good, but I don’t know a lot about that right now. I’m guessing that they’re gonna try to fix it. When the 55 hit me it didn’t really tear up a lot, it just left a tire flat, and then most of the damage just came from hitting the dirt. But I think they’ll fix it.”
DID YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENED? “It looked like they were bump drafting it’s so slick today. I mean, if you put new tires on and somebody is out there with old tires, you sometimes don’t think about how bad the guy’s car is driving in front of you, so I would say it was new tires versus old.”
