Newman believes the most difficult aspect of his battle with Suarez, and even Bowyer, is to find the necessary balance between driving cautiously and aggressively.
“It takes both,” Newman said. “To me, this is no different than when the green flag dropped for the Daytona 500. You have just as many opportunities and points to gain as you do to lose, and it is the same for everybody. You can’t try to make up for in one race what you didn’t accomplish in the first 25. We are in a position where we are break even with one, have to race another and have to keep our eyes on the one behind us. That is no different than it was in Daytona.
“We just need to go out there and do our job and try to win. If we can’t, take the best position we can take and keep in mind that we are racing for something more than just one race, we are racing for the next 10.”
With Bowyer, Suarez, Newman and Johnson all trying to get locked into the final two positions for the playoffs, do drivers want to know where their rivals are at in the field, or would they prefer to drive their own race and not worry about the numbers?
“I want to be able to know where they are at, whether it is in front of me or behind me but in the end, it doesn’t matter,” Newman admitted. “It just is something that slides in your consciousness. If I can’t get to them, then I can’t get to them. If I have them behind me, I want to keep them behind me. That is the facts of it. I think you kind of subconsciously want to know those things but in the end, you can’t do anything about it, otherwise you would lap the field 22 times.”
Suarez takes a bit of a different attitude into the race. He chooses to focus on his race and mission to become the first driver from Mexico to compete in NASCAR’s playoffs.
“With the points situation and the bubble and all that kind of stuff, at the end of the day we have to control what we can control,” Suarez said. “I cannot control where Newman finishes. I can’t control where Bowyer or Johnson finish. The only thing I can control is myself and I have to try to put myself in the best position for stage points and to finish the race in the best position so we can make it.
“I cannot control their results. I cannot go out there to wreck all three of them to make sure I am going to be fine. That is not how it works. I am going to go out there and do my thing, and the team will do theirs and the pit crew. This weekend is big because it is the last one and there is more pressure and I think is more fun and there is more attention from the media and things. It is part of it. I try to have fun with it.
“I try to go out there to do my thing.”