Full Throttle

It’s a story that never ends. When the 2005 NASCAR season ended one could have expected the long running “As the Newman-Wallace World Turns” soap would have hit the ratings wall and been cancelled.

Expectations don’t always turn into reality and Newman has accused Wallace of turning over testing data to rival competitors.

“The policy was broken not by us but by somebody else who shared the information with people he wasn’t supposed to,” Newman told ESPNews on Thursday, “and that’s not cool.

“When you share information with somebody who shares information with one of your competitors, it’s kind of pointless to share the information.”

The now retired Wallace didn’t exactly give a resounding repudiation of the charge: “There never was a policy in effect on sharing information,” Wallace said. “One of the perks of being a car owner is to do business the way you want.

I’m not sure I want to buy into this despite Rusty’s ambiguous response. It was fairly well established as fact - by many sources - the two teams didn’t share any testing data in ‘05. Not the least of which was Newman himself who made it a point to let everyone know his displeasure. If the data wasn’t shared how did it get leaked to anyone outside the Penske Racing?

Moreover, I fail to see the logic. If the #12’s testing data was meant to be shared with the #2, and in fact was, and Wallace gave it to another Dodge team, that would hurt Wallace as much as Newman.

You have to ask why he’s acting like a petulant child at the start of a new season. A season that has his chief antagonist on the retired list, a new teammate (who has “issues” of his own), a Dodge that has a less than desirable aero package and no less than five new members of his race day crew.

Me thinks he needs to keep his mouth shut over past “spilt milk” and concentrate on the present, not a tired old soap operas.

UPDATED: Not to be outdone in the “Deja Vu All Over Again Dept,” Dale Jr. weighs in with another whine: “I talked to the powers that be. They said that we didn’t have to go to New York, so I didn’t have to make that trip,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “Then we got thrown under the bus by (Jim) Hunter. Hunter is NASCAR’s vice president of corporate communication.

So who’s doing the “bus tossing” now over a long dead issue? If asked by an “intrepid” reporter say “it’s a new year, sorry that ground has been covered,” if not asked, shut the hell up!