Newman responds to Stremme's comments

The other day I wrote here about what David Stremme said about how Ryan Newman finished last season at Penske before Newman moved over to Tony Stewart's team for this season. Stremme's quote could lead some to think that Newman quit on his team last year. Fan response was spirited.

Newman was unavailable when Stremme, who is taking over Newman's ride this year at Penske, made his comments. Newman was on a conference call with reporters this week, so I asked him about what was said. Here's what Newman said:

"David's comment, to me it's kind of vague.  You could read it several different ways.  But I think he was just talking to the effect of I was moving on.  And when you're moving on, it's hard to not necessarily be as dedicated, but for the organization and everything to click the way it was, and at the point that I decided to move on, it wasn't very successful. 

"The bottom line was I moved on, and I'm happy being where I am with the U.S. Army and Stewart Haas Racing.  As far as the situation goes, I felt grateful to have Tony Stewart who was my future teammate to be going through the same situation and talking to him, him separating himself from Joe Gibbs Racing and the Home Depot and all the things that he did, where I was separating from Alltel and all the great successes that we had.  It was difficult to separate those things.  I guess it's kind of like working two jobs at the same time.  Eventually you run out of sleep. 

"But for me it was just a difficult time to move on.  My dedication to driving the race car never changed.  I drove every lap as hard as I possibly could, and we just didn't have the successes, even though I was moving on at the end of the year, that I even would have hoped.  My goal was still to win five of the last five races.  That never changed.  It's just, it didn't happen, and it's easy to look at things like that.''

Since most people haven't gone through what Newman (and Stewart and other drivers go through in such cases), I asked Newman to further explain what he meant. Here's what Newman said: 

"I guess the two things that come to mind for me are responsibility and people.  You have a responsibility to fulfill yourself and your obligations for the year, and you still have goals you want to achieve, whether they're personal or through the team.  So that was one thing. 

"But the people part of it, to separate those people and the friendships and the things that you had, not to throw them away or discard them, but to keep those friendships and move on and create new friendships with other people, it's literally kind of doing two jobs and two things at once.'' 

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