Motorsports

Newman: Time to move on from Rusty

By BRANT JAMES
Published January 10, 2006

DAYTONA BEACH - Ryan Newman spent the last two years feuding publicly and within the offices and garages at Penske Racing South with freshly retired teammate Rusty Wallace . Newman said he has no regrets about things said and done, because as different as he, 28, and Wallace, 49, are, they likely could have had no other kind of relationship.

"It would have taken a different Rusty Wallace and a different Ryan Newman, and that wasn't the situation," said Newman, who enters his fifth full Nextel Cup season. " ... We all know Rusty is the way he is and I'm the way I am. That wasn't the best scenario for teammates. There wasn't a point where we could have fixed it."

Wallace, an old-school short-track racer whose bravado didn't mesh with Newman's Purdue engineer sarcasm, retired with 55 wins and the 1989 Nextel Cup championship.

NEW PIECE: Dodge debuted the Charger as its racing replacement for the Intrepid last season with great fanfare, bold design changes and ultimately big problems with a new blunt nose piece. As Dodge teams continue to hone the design, Ford put the replacement for the Taurus through its first official on-track tests Monday at Daytona International Speedway with much less ballyhoo. The reason, said Robbie Reiser , crew chief for Ford-driving Matt Kenseth of Roush Racing, is the new Fusion is not so different from its predecessor.

Good thing, he said, because the new testing rules limiting teams to one session at Daytona, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Richmond and Homestead will make information-gathering difficult.

"Sad part about that is the only (super) speedway test we have is at the beginning of the year," he said. "We got four races (at Daytona and Talladega) to run all year long, so there's no other place to test. If you bring a car here and you get damaged in either the Bud Shootout or the 500 you could lose both of your cars and have to start from scratch. I don't like it for that reason, but all in all, it's the same for everybody, so we'll do what we have to do."

OUT OF THE WOODS: Elliott Sadler was fresh out of the woods and in need of some grooming after several weeks of hunting near his home in Emporia, Va. He promised to clean up for sponsors and fans before the season begins. "When I'm in the woods hunting, I don't know much about racing," said Sadler, who tumbled from top five in points early last year to 13th in the final standings. "I'm hunting. That's time away."

TIMES: Bill Elliott 's speed of 187.219 in an MB2 Motorsports No. 36a Chevrolet topped 35 cars on the speed charts. Jeff Gordon 's No. 24 Chevrolet was the fastest (187.029) of the 37 cars that practiced Monday morning.

OBIT: Elizabeth Toomes Petty , mother of racing great Richard Petty and widow of NASCAR pioneer Lee Petty , died Sunday at 88 in Level Cross, N.C.

[Last modified January 10, 2006, 01:52:17]