YIR: Penske Racing

For all the dissimilarities displayed in the 2003 seasons of Penske Racing's NASCAR Winston Cup teammates, there was one emotion that was equally shared at the end of the campaign.

Frustration.

Ryan Newman and Rusty Wallace visited completely different ends of the spectrum in 2003.

Newman was the driver best able to meld driving ability with a technical understanding of the car's performance.

	Newman's eight wins were the most in the Winston Cup Series since 1998. Credit: Autostock

When Newman's abilities meshed with fellow engineer and crew chief Matt Borland, the results for the No. 12 Dodge were stunning.

The team accrued league leading totals for Bud Poles, 11; wins, eight; top-five finishes, 17; top-10 starts, 27; and miles led, 1,509. Newman also had 22 top-10 finishes.

But as sharp as Newman was when he was on, he also paid the price for aggression -- or at best simple bad racing luck -- with seven DNFs, which was two more than any other driver in the top 10.

The month of April epitomized that. Newman scored only 151 points in four straight races in which he had poor finishes at Talladega (39th), Martinsville (38th), California (42nd) and Richmond (39th). He fell to 27th in the championship and spent the rest of the season trying to recover.

Ryan Newman  Driver Page  2003 Stats  Merchandise

Newman failed to complete 1,747.45 miles, the highest total of any driver in the top 30 in the standings. In the end, that killed his championship hopes, but definitely not his spirit and resolve.

Despite getting wrecked in two of the last four races, Newman scored top-10 finishes in nine of the last 11 events of the season.

"We'll be back and try to win everything we can just like this season," Newman said. "We learned a lot this year, and we'll try to keep learning and working hard over the winter and come back strong in 2004."

Wallace endures second straight winless year

Given Newman's success over the past two seasons it is extraordinarily confounding as to why his teammate's No. 2 Dodge is unable to achieve even similar results.

	Wallace's best finish in 2003 came at the spring event at Martinsville, when he finished third. Credit: Autostock

In fact, the end of 2003 saw Wallace's angst reach a new low when his near three-year losing streak reached 98 races.

The season -- which included Wallace's 600th career start -- produced just two top-five finishes, Wallace's lowest total in 19 years; and 12 top-10s, his lowest in seven years and only the third time in 18 years he's slipped that low.

He hasn't won a Bud Pole in more than a year, or 44 races.

Wallace himself admitted in the early fall that despite the success Newman and Borland have had by embracing technology he was still struggling with it.

"Trying to rely more on the technical side has led me into confusion," Wallace said. "I know I have to go that route, I have to trust it and I've got to believe in it if I'm going to gain anything out of it.

"And I'm struggling with it because I don't trust it yet."

As much of a part as that might have played, in many ways the ultimate frustration occurred for Wallace when, with nine races remaining and a chance to get back into the top-10 in the standings for the 11th consecutive season, his team was largely unable to produce.

Technology wasn't all of that.

Rusty Wallace  Driver Page  2003 Stats  Merchandise

"Stupid stuff has been happening to us all year long," Wallace said at Homestead. "We were sitting there running fourth last week (at Phoenix) and the caution came out and we were in the pits and got two laps down. It's just poor luck -- we've had it all year and we can't get out of it."

Although he qualified an average of 13th, Wallace managed just three top-10 finishes in the stretch run, and led only four races. In the end he remained 14th, his worst points finish in the last 18 seasons and only the second in that time outside the top 10.

"I've never in my life had a season like this," Wallace said. "Yeah, I've always been winning all the time and (now) I've been on a dry spell. I've moved a lot of crewmembers around trying to find the sweet spot.

"We've been trying to find the right crew combo that supports what I need -- not what somebody else has run or needed -- but what I need. We're getting closer and closer. It's been a slow climb, it really has."

"It was too little too late like it was all year," Wallace said after the Homestead finale, but he could have been talking about the year. "I'm really glad the whole season is behind us now."