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November 21, 2005
Everyone Stands to Honor Rusty Wallace... Except His Own Teammate
From the Atlanta Journal Constitution via Jayski's:
Standing 'O' for Rusty at drivers meeting, except.... Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president of competition, invited Rusty Wallace to the microphone within the first five minutes of the weekly prerace drivers meeting at Homestead on Sunday. Wallace, who went on to finish 13th on Sunday evening, drew a standing ovation from the drivers in the room. Everyone stood, with the exception of Penske Racing South teammate Ryan Newman, who has been at constant odds with the 1989 Cup champion."It's been a great ride," Wallace told his fellow drivers. "I can remember when I came in, it was [Cale] Yarborough, [David] Pearson, [Richard] Petty and [Dale] Earnhardt. Now those guys are all gone and you guys are all here. I'm looking forward to life after racing. And if I've roughed anybody up along the way, I'm sorry. I didn't really mean it, unless it paid more."(Atlanta Journal-Constitution)(11-21-2005)
What Ryan Newman did during the driver's meeting on Sunday highlights how ridiculous and childish the feud between Newman and his now retired teammate Rusty Wallace was. Teammates don't need to be best friends or even like each other much but they do need to work together, even if it's just on the most basic of levels, but bad blood has existed between those two dating back more than a year and that's led to the two not even being on speaking terms. It's been said that the ill will can be traced to an incident at Martinsville last fall but my suspicion is that there's much more to it. I've always thought that the two needed to suck it up and put their personal feelings to the side for the overall good of Penske Racing. But instead of getting better over time things seemed to get worse between Newman and Wallace.
Which led to Newman not standing to honor Wallace at the driver's meeting like the rest of the drivers. I think that out of respect to a man who has been a huge part of the sport for so long Newman should have just stood and clapped. But then again, the animosity between the two is far from one-sided. Neither man seems to think well of the other and that Newman didn't stand highlights how bad things really must be between them. It boggles my mind that Penske never stepped in to try and broker a truce or maybe they tried and were unsuccessful. I think that's very unfortunate because everyone benefits when teammates and teams work together and share information.
Posted by silverdsl at November 21, 2005 08:55 PM