With first top five of season, Newman nearly matching 2014 performance that led to final four

Ryan Newman had a decent car at Kentucky Speedway, but not one that would have placed him in the top five on its own.

Newman made sure to thank the person who came up with the strategy that saved him enough fuel to place him third at night’s end in the Quaker State 400, his first top five in 28 races.

“A good well-played race by (crew chief) Luke (Lambert) and all of us to get the finish that we did,” Newman said Saturday night. “We did have a good car. We just never seemed to be able to get good track position and played the fuel game there at the end, did what I thought I had to do, and with no fuel gauge or any kind of telemetry was able to make it to the end.”

After starting the night at Kentucky Speedway in 14th, the Richard Childress Racing car had an average running spot just outside the top 10 (11.80). But staying out during the final 68 caution free laps, as leaders Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick pitted, proved a worth calculation on Lambert’s part. Newman saved enough to score his first top five since Chicagoland Speedway last year, the first race of the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

“Was hoping that we were going to be the first guy that could pull that one off, not the third guy,” said Newman, whose previous best result this year was seventh at Kansas Speedway.

“It’s four places better than our best finish all year,” said Newman. “Our first top five … that’s a big deal. Proud of that effort. Leading into this stretch of races, especially where we are in the Chase, to have good points tonight, even though it wasn’t a win. It’s a small victory in itself.”

It might be small, but it could be a big sign of what the team is capable of. Newman didn’t earn his first top five of the 2014 season until the Cup series came to Kentucky in its 17th race. The team went on to qualify for the Chase and then the final four at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where it finished second in the race and the championship to Kevin Harvick.

Also like 2014, Newman entered Kentucky this year with five top 10s.

But after that 2014 Kentucky race, Newman was eighth in the points and earned four more top fives before the end of the season.

Newman’s result Saturday night has him at 12th in the point standings, the second-highest driver without a win and not qualified for the Chase. The highest is Chase Elliott, who is eighth in the standings.

“We started the season off decent but not where we wanted to be or where we thought we should’ve been,” Newman said. “We’ve still got some more work to do. We’re not leading a bunch of laps or leading the most laps in a given race and talking about how we didn’t win. We’re talking about how we can finish in the top five. We’ve got some work to do, don’t get me wrong, but I’m proud of the effort that went into tonight.”

Now Newman’s team heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway (July 17) and Indianapolis Motor Speedway (July 24). Newman has three wins at Loudon, but none since 2011. Since then he has one top five and four top tens. Indianapolis was the site of his last win in 2013. He finished 11th there the last two years.

TONY STEWART CHASE WATCH

Tony Stewart returned from a back injury in April, and the three-time Sprint Cup Series champion is in pursuit of one of the 16 spots in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup in his final season. Here's a look at where the driver of the No. 14 Chevrolet stands in his hunt after Saturday's fifth-place finish in the Quaker State 400 Presented by Advanced Auto Parts at Kentucky, the season's 18th of 26 regular-season races.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED
The Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner/wheelman had one of his best races of the season in his 600th career Sprint Cup start, finishing fifth. It was Stewart's second top-five finish of the season; his only other finish among the top five was his win at Sonoma. Stewart started 22nd, and had enough fuel left to continue running near the front at the end.

He now sits 31 points inside of the top 30 -- which is where he needs to be in order to make the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup and compete for his fourth championship. As it stands now, he's in.

WHAT HE NEEDS
Stewart received a waiver from NASCAR for Chase eligibility. The surest way into the Chase is by winning before the end of regular season (at Richmond International Raceway on Sept. 10) -- which Stewart did at Sonoma -- and remain in the top 30 in the points standings. En route to his 2015 championship, Kyle Busch faced a similar path after missing the first 11 races with a leg injury. With the win now in the bank, Stewart can focus on reaching the top 30. He sits 30th in the standings with 248 points, 31 points ahead of  Brian Scott ’s 217 points. Stewart is 15 points back of David Ragan for 29th in the standings. 

WHAT'S NEXT
"Smoke" heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway (July 17 at 1:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where he has three victories. In his 33 starts there, Stewart has 14 top fives and 18 top 10s. 

BRAD KESELOWSKI WINS FUEL-MILEAGE GAME AT KENTUCKY

SPARTA, Ky. – Brad Keselowski had his mojo working in Saturday night’s Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway.

Saving just enough fuel to get to the finish line, Keselowski eked out a heart-thumping victory over Carl Edwards to win his second consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race and his third at Kentucky Speedway.

But this was not the same bumpy, abrasive Kentucky Speedway where Keselowski went to Victory Lane in 2012 and 2014. This was a repaved, reconfigured 1.5-mile intermediate track fraught with treachery, especially when combined with the lower-downforce aerodynamic package in use for the race.

RELATED: Recap all of Keselowski's wins

Keselowski got to the finish line .175 seconds ahead of Edwards, who made up a deficit of more than six seconds in the final 10 laps but couldn't quite get to Keselowski's rear bumper on the final lap.

When Keselowski took the checkered flag, his fuel cell was dry. The driver of the No. 2 Team Penske Ford didn’t have enough gas to do a celebratory burnout, and he needed a push from a safety truck to get to Victory Lane.

Keselowski took the lead from Kevin Harvick after a restart on Lap 200 and held it the rest of the way, except for Lap 261, when Matt Kenseth took the top spot and immediately came to pit road for fuel.

By then, the die was cast for Keselowski, who was committed to finishing the race without another fuel stop.

"We knew the fuel mileage," said Keselowski, who won for the fourth time this year, the 21st time in his career, and became the first driver to officially clinch a spot in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. "We went out and we set a really fast pace there on that restart and were just using fuel, and then it became obvious that you were going to have to save fuel at the end, but I already used so much.

"It's a testament to our guys to have the fuel mileage that we did to be able to get back what I burnt early in the run and get the Miller Lite Ford in Victory Lane. Usually these repaves are kind of my Achilles heel, but to get a win here at Kentucky… I know it's been a good track for us in the past, but this isn't the same Kentucky, I can tell you that. 

"These cars were tough to drive today, but a good tough. This was a hard-fought battle, and I'm really proud of everybody on the 2 crew to get win number four and take that first place."

When Keselowski slowed through Turn 4 on the next-to-last lap, Edwards thought he had the race won, but in retrospect, Edwards believed he had been beaten by a cunning opponent.

"Yeah, I thought he was out of fuel coming off of (Turn) 4, but he actually did it very well," Edwards said of Keselowski, who indicated on his radio with more than a lap left that he was out of fuel. "If he didn't beat me, I'd be more impressed…

"I guess I'm impressed that he did beat me, but I don't want to be. He waited. He basically shut the car off and went right off of 4 and matched it perfectly to where I couldn't get by him down the front straightaway, and then he ran like heck through 1 and 2, and then I thought maybe he'll run out down the back straight. Man, I dove it down in there trying to catch him into 3, and I couldn't even get to him."

RELATED: Edwards discusses finish of race

Keselowski, however, said he thought he was out of gas when his car sputtered off Turn 4.

"I didn't think I was going to win the race," Keselowski said.

Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. dominated the first two-thirds of the event, leading 128 and 46 laps, respectively.

Truex had taken the lead off pit road on Lap 196, but NASCAR sent him to the rear of the field for passing Harvick, then the race leader, on the entry to pit road. For the last 68 laps, Truex drove like a madman, advancing from 23rd to as high as third before pitting for fuel and finishing 10th.

"It wasn't my night on that deal," Truex said. "It's frustrating, we had the car to beat. We came out with the lead and they took it away from us. It's just the way it goes, I guess."

Particularly perilous throughout the race were the flatter of the two corners —Turns 3 and 4 — with the entry to Turn 3 especially daunting. Ten laps into the race, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. pancaked the right side of his No. 17 Ford against the outside wall of the Turn 3 torture chamber.

Nor were champions and frontrunners exempt from calamity. On Lap 32, Jimmie Johnson spun through Turn 4 and crumpled the left rear quarter of his No. 48 Chevrolet. On Lap 53, Joey slammed the Turn 3 wall after scraping it 10 laps earlier.

On Lap 88, Ryan Blaney spun from the middle of a three-wide dilemma in Turn 3 and took the No. 24 Chevrolet of fellow Sunoco Rookie of the Year competitor Chase Elliott with him. On Lap 93, the cars of Brian Scott , Chris Buescher and AJ Allmendinger were mangled in an eight-car pileup.

Lap 194 produced the 11th caution of the race, tying the record set last year, but from a restart on Lap 200 through the finish on Lap 267, the race ran green, and Keselowski was able to squeeze 68 laps out of his fuel cell.

"We were totally out at the start/finish line," said Paul Wolfe, Keselowski's crew chief. "So it couldn't have timed out any better."

Notes: Kurt Busch ran fourth, followed by Tony Stewart , who scored a top five in his 600th career start… Greg Biffle scored a season-best sixth-place finish… Harvick came home ninth and saw his series points lead shrink to four markers over Keselowski.

IT'S CLEARLY 'SHARK WEEK' FOR NASCAR DRIVERS

Something is in -- ahem -- the water this weekend at Kentucky Speedway.

First, Kurt Busch photo bombed a Joey Logano interview by making a shark fin with his hand. (Watch that video here)

Then, during an exciting battle for the lead early in Saturday night's race, Martin Truex Jr. 's spotter hummed the "Jaws" theme while his driver hunted Kevin Harvick for the lead.

All of that shark stuff can't be a coincidence.

Any thoughts, Kasey Kahne ?

What do you say, Brad Keselowski ?

ROOKIE STALWARTS CHASE ELLIOTT, RYAN BLANEY WRECK

Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidates Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney made contact with each other and spun in Turn 3 on Lap 87 of 267 in the Quaker State 400 Presented by Advance Auto Parts on Saturday at Kentucky Speedway.

Both drivers were running in the top 10 shortly after a restart when the right front corner of Blaney's No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford made contact with the left rear of Elliott's No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet SS.

"I got put in a bad spot on the restarts a few times," Blaney said on NBCSN. "We got in the middle of (Turn) 3, someone was on our bumper, and got loose, unfortunately. We took the 24 (of Elliott) out, which was not intentional. We both had really good cars."

Elliott entered and ended the night eighth in the standings while Blaney, who came in 15th, dropped to 18th and was 24 points beneath the Chase cutoff line.

"I tried to give as much room as possible," Elliott told NBCSN. "But hey, that's racing, I guess. We'll try to go get them next week."

Elliott returned to the race on Lap 145, 57 laps down from the leaders. Blaney returned on Lap 204, 116 laps down. Elliott finished in 31st place while Blaney was 35th.

Blaney aplogized for the wreck and to No. 24 fans on Twitter after the race, taking responsibility for the collision.

Tonight’s Sprint Cup race at Kentucky: start time, weather, TV/radio info and lineup

SPARTA, Ky. — The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series will play host Saturday to the Quaker State 400 at Martinsville Speedway.

Here are the particulars (all times are ET):

START: George Sherman, president of Advance Auto Parts, will give the command for drivers to start their engines at 7:37 p.m. ET. The green flag is scheduled for 7:45 p.m.

DISTANCE: The race is scheduled for 400.5 laps (267 miles) around the 1.5-mile oval.

PRERACE SCHEDULE: The Sprint Cup garage opens at 1:30 p.m. The drivers meeting is at 5:30 p.m. Driver introductions are at 7 p.m.

NATIONAL ANTHEM: It will be performed by Marlana VanHoose at 7:31 p.m.

TV/RADIO: NBCSN will broadcast the race. Performance Racing Network will broadcast the race on radio and at GoPRN.com. SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will carry PRN’s broadcast.

FORECAST: The wunderground.com site predicts 82 degrees at race time with a 0% chance of rain.

LAST TIME: In the debut of the lower-downforce package that became the template for this season’s rules, Kyle Busch outdueled Joey Logano to capture his second victory at Kentucky and the first of three consecutive wins for the Joe Gibbs Racing driver.

STARTING LINEUP:

Danica Patrick: ‘There’s potential sitting there. We’ve got to figure it out’

SPARTA, Ky. – With her three Stewart-Haas Racing teammates having won this season, it would be natural for Danica Patrick, whose average finish is 23.4 in 2016, to feel performance pressure.

But the driver of the No. 10 Chevrolet, who has one top 15 (a 13th at Dover International Speedway), is choosing to look at the positives.

“It’s only really an upside,” she said Thursday at a sponsor event near Kentucky Speedway. “There’s potential sitting there. We’ve got to figure it out. You just never know when that day could come. I feel like you just have to be ready.”

There have been few highlights for Patrick in her first season with new crew chief Billy Scott. She is ranked 26th in the points standings and has slipped in qualifying with an average starting spot of 25.6 (more than three positions lower than each of the past two seasons).

She will enter Saturday’s Quaker State 400 with four finishes outside the top 20 in the past five races.

“I don’t feel confident enough in how it’s gone that we’ve been so fast that I feel like a win is around the corner,” she said. “But you just never know what can happen, and there are all kinds of things that can happen in a race. Someday you might show up like it’s happened to me over the last couple of years where you’re just good, and that might be the day, so you have to be ready, and you have to be focused.

“But until it becomes more of an expectation, it’s about working on all the details and improving every aspect, so it is a more normal objective of ours instead of top 15.”

The most memorable example of the switch suddenly flipping on for Patrick was the May 10, 2014 race at Kansas Speedway, where she qualified ninth and finished seventh – her first top 10 in 45 Sprint Cup races.

That was the fourth race on a 1.5-mile oval that recently had been repaved. Kentucky’s recent resurfacing offers some hope of being an equalizer Saturday night.

Patrick recalls a restart at Kansas in which she passed Kasey Kahne for third despite being on the nonpreferred top line as a good example of capitalizing with a strong car.

“(Kansas) is what I mean by you have to be ready, and certain races like Martinsville and some other places have been really good races, and those are the days that you have to mentally put yourself there so you’re not surprised when it happens,” she said. “What’s funny is usually when it’s going really well, and I feel fast, I have even more confidence. That’s not a crazy thought, but I feel very comfortable. I don’t feel out of place.

“That’s the kind of confidence I feel when the car is right, so it’s a matter of finding a way to get there more consistently.”