Notes: Newman's father steps down as spotter

CONCORD, N.C. -- Ryan Newman has decided that family and business shouldn't always mix.

The Stewart-Haas driver has a new spotter for the 2010 season, which isn't necessarily always a noteworthy move. But it is when the previous spotter is your father, and he's been in your ear for most of your career at NASCAR's highest level. But Greg Newman won't be up on the spotter's stand for the No. 39 car this year, a move that Ryan said was less for performance reasons than for personal ones.

Newman

"It was very difficult at times for my dad and I to have a father-son relationship at the race team versus a competitive relationship at the race track," Ryan said Wednesday during the preseason media tour. "I guess you don't really understand that until you work with family in a very stressful position, as it was with him. And that wasn't the reason for the firing, it was a multitude of things. And I guess I shouldn't say firing, because it wasn't that. It was more of a mutual decision.

"Ultimately, my dad has done a great job as a spotter, and I look forward to him being at the race track in the capacity that he enjoys."

Newman's new spotter will be Jimmy Kitchens, a former driver who made 47 starts in the then-Busch Series between 1994 and 2005.

Hutchens' loss

In the midst of preparing for the 2010 season, Bobby Hutchens is also dealing with personal grief. The Stewart-Haas competition director lost his wife Sharon on Dec. 22, when she succumbed after a five-year battle with breast cancer.

Hutchens dealt with it the only way he knew how -- he went back to work.

"This is all I know how to do. I don't hunt, I don't fish and I don't golf. I race. When I'm not here, I race my own stuff. It was imperative for me to get back as soon as possible because the season was coming up. I have a job and a responsibility to this organization, and I feel I needed to be there when the new year kicked off," he said.

"It was best for me to try and get engaged back in the game, as you might say, to keep myself going. I've got a 19-year-old and an 11-year-old I've got to worry about also, and we're learning how to live life a little differently. But so far we've done a pretty good job of dealing with the challenge we've been faced with. I won't say it's the easiest thing I've ever done, but we've had a lot of support from everybody in our organization."

New Charlotte seats

Charlotte Motor Speedway is installing approximately 15,000 new seats along the frontstretch of the 1.5-mile facility. These flip-down, plastic-molded arena-style seats, which are wider and have armrests, will replace the narrow metal seats installed decades ago.

The new seats will be installed before the All-Star race in May. But if you really, really like those old seats, you can take one home with you -- if you buy tickets to all three Sprint Cup events scheduled for the track in 2010.

The Charlotte track also announced that its Nationwide Series event in May, traditionally a night race, will instead begin at 2:30 p.m. ET this year.

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