Turn 2

You might reasonably expect to see another rant about the "race" at the Brickyard in this space.

But you won't. Don't get me wrong--I didn't like the ten-lap heat format that developed; I was looking for a real race, too, and wish we'd seen one. Still, that's not my topic today.

Or I could point out that NASCAR's decision to penalize Toyota for coming up with more horsepower in the Nationwide series engines--legally--defeats the purpose of racing. (As Darrell Waltrip said, "When I complained about Ford engines making more power when I raced one year, they told me, 'Go buy yourself one, then.'")

Lots of people are writing about those things, though. I want to go back a few days, to Rusty Wallace's ill-advised attempt to...explain...the Ryan Newman-Roger Penske split.

Rusty, you will recall, is now employed as a NASCAR color analyst for ESPN. He has had some trouble with this role, since he calls Nationwide Series races, and his son Steve, who races in that series, spent a lot of last season--and some of this one--wrecking, frequently taking other drivers with him.

Rusty's initial on-air reaction was (usually) to blame someone or something else for the problems, but by the end of the year, he would simply stop talking when Steve crashed.

It's to bad he didn't do that last week, when it occurred to him to tell reporters "exactly how [the split] went down."

Despite the fact that Newman--and the company--claimed his departure was mutual, Rusty said, "I'll clear this leaving thing up," at an ESPN press conference. "He [Newman] didn't leave. I've read many, many stories that said that," Wallace said. "Roger Penske called Ryan Newman up to his offices and said, 'I don't need your services next year.' Ryan Newman didn't come to him and say, 'I'm leaving.' "

He went on to tell the assembled press that "You all need to write that."

Naturally, Newman disputed the statement. "I don't what Rusty's grounds are or what he's trying to prove by saying that. That wasn't the case -- point blank. Roger and I decided mutually to not continue, and it was more my decision than it was his, I would say," Newman said. "I said our goals didn't align, and for that reason and that reason alone, we decided to not continue after 2008."

Unfortunately for Rusty, Roger Penske agreed. "[Newman] made a decision, we made it together that he'd move on," he said. "There was no issue between the two of us. There's some reports that there was and that's not the case." The press release issued on July 14 had also said the decision was mutual.

So just who does Rusty think he is? He and Ryan Newman have never gotten along, even when they were teammates at Penske.

But now, he's not just another loudmouth driver in the garage, trashtalking. He is supposed to be a professional broadcaster, covering drivers like Newman, and that means it is inappropriate (to say the least) for him to publicly step into the middle of a situation like this.

There's been no indication that Rusty is going to suffer any official repercussion for his comments, which is not all that surprising. After all, ESPN has no problem allowing current race team owners to be broadcasters for races in which their own teams compete. (Can you imagine how much Marge Schott would have loved that?) It does not appear that the network cares all that much about propriety.

Maybe he'll learn to keep his mouth shut on such matters in the future, at least while he's working for ESPN.

On the other hand, it's Rusty Wallace, so that may be asking too much.