Tony Stewart already went through the motions, so Ryan Newman just had to keep a level head.

Last season an engine failure on lap 2 forced Stewart -- who had dominated Speedweeks 2002 before the Daytona 500 -- to pull off of the Daytona International Speedway on lap 3 of the big race.

Stewart was furious with himself and with his team and, well, everything in the moments after he pulled his No. 20 Pontiac Grand Prix off the race track and into the garage.

He was so furious, in fact, that he waved off the flight home and drove the distance alone so that he could gather his thoughts and clear his mind. The move obviously did some good, because Stewart is now the reigning Winston Cup champion.

Newman didn't do himself any damage by taking the flight home this season after a wreck, which was not his fault, relegated him to a last-place finish in the Great American Race. He already has Stewart's example to follow. He didn't need to forge any new path.

"It's been done before," the driver of the No. 12 Dodge Intrepid said. "It can be done again."

Newman settled into that mind set minutes after the spectacular wreck which finished his day.

Whether Ken Schrader was hit by someone else (possibly Ward Burton's No. 22) or not is unclear -- but Schrader's car was forced into the back of Newman's in last weekend's Daytona 500 and sent Newman's left-rear tire (and axle) off the car and sent Newman's car flipping through the infield grass.

Newman was OK, but his day was done.

Immediately, however, he composed himself.

	Ryan Newman was not injured after his wild ride at Daytona.

"I'm not thinking about now," he said. "I'm thinking about the future. We've got to make the most we can out of the rest of the season. ... Now, we're looking forward to Rockingham."

Rockingham and the 1.017-mile North Carolina Speedway are up next for Newman, who believes his bid to become the first driver since Dale Earnhardt in 1980 to win a Winston Cup championship the year after being named rookie of the year is still in tact.

And he's not the only one who thinks so. Count Newman's teammate, Rusty Wallace, among those who understand that the Daytona 500 pays the same amount of points as the 35 other points races during the 2003 season, so there's no reason to stress out.

"Look at Stewart last year," said Wallace, who himself is looking to rebound from a 25th-place finish. "He blows up at Daytona and finishes dead last. He got off to a really tough start and didn't even show up on the radar screen as far as the points go until pretty deep into the season. Yet they were able to mount a charge and bring home that big trophy at the end of the year. The big thing is not getting all freaked out just about the first race of the year.

"At the end of the day, there are 36 races that all have the same amount of points."

Certainly, momentum counts for something and in that regard Chevrolet driver and 500 victor Michael Waltrip has something going for him. But so will the winner of the race in Rockingham.

"A good Daytona can give you a lot, but a good Rockingham can too," Dodge driver Kyle Petty said. "A good Rockingham can undo a not-so-good Daytona. It can give you the impetus you need that carries you on into Vegas and Atlanta and on and on."

And, adds 2002 champ Stewart, the race at Rockingham has little to do with drafting and the way one car ahead or behind you effects you. It has to do with driver and setup, two areas where Newman and his No. 12 Dodge team have proven very effective.

"What you do at Rockingham is solely based on what you and your team can do with your race car, not what drafting line you're in or how the car behind you is going to affect your next move," Stewart said. "Once we get away from Daytona everything kind of settles into a groove. I enjoy going to Rockingham. That's a track where you don't really worry about what everybody else's car is doing, you worry about what your car is doing. You're racing the race track. You're not racing everybody else."

Newman knows there's precedent for what he wants to do. He knows that driver can win the title the year after winning rookie honors. He knows that a driver can win the title after finishing dead last in the season-opener.

But he also knows that both are done only with the odds stacked against a driver- - so he won't make bold predictions, yet. All he can do is move on to the next race.

"We'll see how the season plays out, I can't tell you what's going to happen, now," he said. "But we're going on to Rockingham and we're ready. We're not worried about what happened in the past."

Rupen Fofaria covers NASCAR for The Raleigh News & Observer and is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.