NASCAR UAW-GM QUALITY 500 Newman pleased with pole win

He's turned a deaf ear to allegations his team is cheating.
CONCORD, N.C. (AP) -- Winning on the race track is the best way Ryan Newman and his team can answer allegations of cheating.
Newman won his Winston Cup series-leading eighth pole of the season Thursday night, setting a new track record in qualifying for the UAW-GM Quality 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway.
He also has a series-best eight victories this season, prompting grumbling from competitors over alleged cheating by the Penske Racing South team.
With a huge smile on his face, Newman seemed to have turned a deaf ear to it.
"There's nothing wrong with grinning when you're winning," Newman said.
Few expectations
Driver after driver posted their qualifying laps for Saturday night's race with few expectations of any of the top speeds holding up through Newman's late run.
Jeff Gordon held down the top spot for most of the session, but was bumped when Newman set a new track record with a lap at 186.657 mph in the No. 12 Dodge.
"We unloaded off the truck really, really fast and expected to go even faster," Newman said. "I gave everything I had the second lap and I really had to hang on."
Gordon ran a lap at 186.207 to qualify second in a Chevrolet. Jimmie Johnson, his teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, qualified third at 185.497 mph.
Newman also won the pole here for the Coca-Cola 600 in May, but finished fifth when the race was called because of rain.
The victory actually went to Johnson, who added it to the win he earned the week before in The Winston. He'll try to become the first driver to win all three races at Lowe's in the same season on Saturday night, when he competes in the same car he used to win the Coca-Cola 600.
Nature of the sport
But all anyone wanted to talk to him about was Newman's run of success.
"The way our sport works it's all about the last time you were on the race track," Johnson said. "And the last time we were on the track, Ryan won the race and then he won the pole. That's the nature of our sport."
Bill Elliott qualified fourth in a Dodge and Kevin Lepage was fifth in a Pontiac.
Tony Stewart was sixth and Elliott Sadler, Todd Bodine, Kevin Harvick and Mike Skinner rounded out the top 10.
Series points leader Matt Kenseth had yet another poor qualifying run, coming in at 29th in the No. 17 Ford. Consecutive poor finishes have sliced Kenseth's lead to 259 points over Harvick with six races remaining.