INDIANAPOLIS -- The official release announcing Ryan Newman's impending separation from Penske Racing said the split was by mutual decision. But former NASCAR champion Rusty Wallace, who drove for Roger Penske for more than a decade and still talks to the car owner regularly, isn't convinced that's how it happened.

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He needed to move on and find a driver, rather than Ryan saying, 'Well, I don't know if I'm going to come back, I might, I might not.' Roger's not like that.

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RUSTY WALLACE

Wallace, now a television analyst, thinks Penske effectively fired Newman, having grown weary of the driver's indecision over his future as well as his less-than-flattering depiction of the organization's equipment. Penske's two Sprint Cup cars are currently 16th and 18th in points, and Newman said he would consider leaving the team if on-track performance did not improve.

That became reality last week, when Newman and Penske "mutually agreed" to part ways, according a release sent out by the team. But Wallace believes it was more a matter of Penske splitting with Newman than the Daytona 500 champion leaving.

"He didn't leave," Wallace said Friday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where will be help call the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard for ESPN. "I've read many, many stories that said that. Roger Penske called Ryan Newman into to his office and said, 'I don't need your services next year.' Ryan Newman didn't come to him and say, 'I'm leaving,' OK? Y'all need to write about that. That's exactly how it went down. I've never seen Roger Penske let anybody in his life go. Obviously there was some bad blood there. I don't know what went on, I don't work there anymore, but that's what happened. I love Roger Penske, so I'm going to clear the story up right now."

Wallace admits that he and Newman, old-school and new-school racers respectively, didn't have the best of relationships during their four years together at Penske. He also said that Penske hasn't told him explicitly how the separation with Newman went down. But Wallace said he knows Penske very well, and added that the car owner did tell him how disappointed he was in Newman's comments regarding the team's lack of performance.

"Roger doesn't like anybody telling him his equipment's junk or he doesn't like this or doesn't like that," Wallace said. "Obviously Ryan and I never got along real well, that's for sure. You guys all know that. [Penske] will give anybody anything they want: engineers, whatever. And Ryan knows that. And we hyped up forever and ever how he is the engineer for years and years, and they can't get that car figured out. I talked to Roger, and he didn't like it. He didn't like all the negative stuff. I didn't know exactly, but I knew that they needed to move on quick. That's the key. He needed to move on and find a driver, rather than Ryan saying, 'Well, I don't know if I'm going to come back, I might, I might not.' Roger's not like that. He's not going to be held hostage by somebody else. You're in or you're out. There's no waffling. And Roger says, 'I'm not waiting, I'm moving.' and that was it."

Penske was not at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Friday, and could not be reached for comment. Newman -- who was not part of the Stewart-Haas Racing car unveiling held Friday, and said he has yet to sign a contract with anyone for 2009 and beyond -- said his former teammate was just flat wrong.

"I don't know what Rusty's grounds are, what he's trying to prove by saying that," Newman said. "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. I said our goals didn't align, and for that reason and that reason alone we decided not to continue through 2008."

Wallace emphasized that he hasn't been in the loop at Penske since he retired as a driver, but he said he does speak to Penske at least twice a week. And comments made last week by Penske Racing president Tim Cindric seem to back up Wallace's assertion that the "mutual separation" might have been more the decision of the team than the driver.

"There's a point where there's a decision that has to be made," Cindric told NASCAR.COM on July 15. "Our first choice was to keep Ryan on board with us, but you can't draw it out forever. There's going to be a point where we either have to decide whether we're in or we're out, and obviously today was the day to part ways."

Besides, Wallace added, Penske has done something like this before. "Jeremy Mayfield said, 'Every time I get in this car, it's junk,'" Wallace said, referring to the driver who competed for Penske until 2001. "[Penske] said, 'Well, you know what, you need to go find another job.' That was it. He was very, very upset with Ryan Newman."

Such assertions seemed to baffle Newman. "Was [Wallace] conscious when he said it?" he asked. The claim that he was fired is "not true," Newman added. "It doesn't matter to me. I know Rusty and his personalities -- plural -- and everybody is different."

So did Penske really bristle at Newman's criticisms? "Nobody likes to be criticized as a driver, and nobody likes to be criticized as an owner," Newman said. "Constructive criticism isn't part of what I have to do as a driver. If I don't feel like I have good equipment or as good equipment as the guy that's ahead of me, then I speak up. That's a racer. That's just the way it is. You have to be able to stomach a percentage of that whether you're a car owner, crew chief, or a guy changing the tires. That's part of it. I'd expect the same the thing in return."

Also:
• Penske makes decision to part ways with Newman