Did Ryan Newman quit on his team last year?

At first the idea seems out there, yet David Stremme, who is replacing Ryan Newman in the 12 car this year at Penske, initially hinted at something like that while talking to reporters in a conference call Wednesday.

Things started when I asked Stremme about how Penske can climb into the level that Roush, Hendrick, Childress and Gibbs are are _ since there is truly a gap between those teams and everyone else.

Here's what Stremme said (I've highlighted what he said about Newman): "I think a lot had to do with people and Roger (Penske) and Tim Cindric are very good at that. They've had a lot of changes here. One of the things you've got to look at is you had Sam Hornish come in here, he was a rookie, he was going through all kinds of new things like a new environment and learning the stock cars and not having much experience and he had a lot of highs and lows.

“You had Ryan Newman who was here, started out the season very well and then he knew he was leaving. It was kind of, he done a very good job but he knew he was on his way out and he was going to do other things.

“And then you had Kurt there who was on an island by himself, who was looking around like I need some teammates to lean on and him and Sam were talking, but it’s like I said, Sam was learning. And then as a company, they had management changes, they had different personnel. I felt through all of that, that was a building year. You look at the end of the season of Penske and how they run, especially with the new Dodge motors that’s out, the RO-7, Kurt run second there at Phoenix, was strong all day. They had strong runs a lot of places like Charlotte and Atlanta. Those had to do with results of how hard everybody has been working. When you just look at the state of racing and the economy and everything else, Penske Racing is strong. We’re very fortunate to have three great partners like Alltel, Miller and Mobil One and then we had AAA come on board. They haven’t released anybody here. We’ve been working forward to try to make the products better, and I feel that they’re doing that with building us new cars and doing a lot of research and testing and a lot of other teams are just looking to survive and stay afloat and letting people go and that’s where I feel our strength has been.

So, after hearing that I asked him more about Newman.

Q: One of the things I want to clarify, I hear what the organization is doing and I understand what you’re talking about with Sam Hornish being a rookie and his struggles, you mention with Ryan, saying he did a good job at the start of the year and then he was going to look to do other things. I want to make sure I’m clear on that, are you almost suggesting that he kind of gave up on the team or the organization last year?

So, Stremme says Newman stayed with it but still you get the sense that Stremme (remember he was a test driver for Penske last year while racing in the Nationwide series for Rusty Wallace's team) suggests that Newman wasn't all into things late last year.

Coincidence or not _ and certainly there were a lot of factors with the struggles with the team _ Newman had only two top-10 finishes in the final 20 races of last year. The qualifying ace that he is only had three top-10 starts during that same time.

I called Newman's PR person to see if he had a comment on this. She said he was out of town and declined to comment, preferring to look ahead to this year as Stewart embarks on his first season with Stewart Haas Racing and as a teammate to Tony Stewart.

So, what do you think? There's something to what Stremme said. Or Stremme's wrong. Or this is a lot about nothing?

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