Race teams are like family. You hear it all the time.

So what happens when someone in the family needs to go -- and happens to be real family, as in the father of a Cup driver?

“

It was very difficult at times for my dad and I to have a father-son relationship at the race track versus a competitive relationship at the race track.

”

-- RYAN NEWMAN

Well, Ryan Newman had to make the difficult decision -- actually, he says it was more of a mutual one between him and his father, Greg -- to let the family member go, so Greg Newman was replaced as spotter for Newman by Jimmy Kitchens in the offseason. Kitchens, who drove in the Nationwide Series between 1994 and 2005, will make his Cup debut with the team during Saturday's Budweiser Shootout at Daytona International Speedway.

"It was very difficult at times for my dad and I to have a father-son relationship at the race track versus a competitive relationship at the race track," Newman said.

There are no hard feelings, according to Ryan. Now Greg Newman can go back to doing what he does best at the race track: being a supportive father.

The move merely illustrates the fine line drivers must walk with their teams when it comes to making sure communication on the track is as productive as it needs to be. The changes along those lines for Newman's team started long before last season was even over, as driver and crew chief Tony Gibson came to realize they all were a little too high-strung for their own good during races early on.

"It was a tough situation because with my dad spotting and Tony being the crew chief, I only had two people I could vent to," Newman said. "Those were the only two people that I could talk to, or who talked to me, on a given race.

"So if it got heated, my only options were to vent to one or both of them. My dad could vent to someone there on the spotter stand or Gibson could look over at the engineer and say, 'What the hell is he talking about?' But for me, those were the only two guys I could talk to. Somebody's got to stay calm, among the three of us." (Continued)