Newman weighs option of joining Stewart-Haas team

It's official: Ryan Newman is a candidate to drive the second car next season for Tony Stewart's new team.

"Driving for Tony's team is an option," Newman said Saturday at Chicagoland Speedway, prior to the running of the LifeLock.com 400 Sprint Cup event. "He has a seat. Even you guys [in the media] have marked me as the leading candidate to get in there. So it is an option."

Stewart, who is leaving longtime home Joe Gibbs Racing at the end of this season, announced Thursday that he had acquired a 50 percent ownership in Haas CNC Racing, a two-car operation which will turn into Stewart-Haas Racing at the start of next year. Stewart, a two-time champion on NASCAR's premier series, will pilot one of those entries himself. Newman would seem a leading choice for the other, given his history of on-track success, the fact that his contract at Penske Racing expires after this season and his close relationship with Stewart.

"Tony's a great competitor in a great many ways, because he's tough, but he's also respectful," said Newman, like Stewart a native of Indiana. "He's been a good friend on and off the racetrack, specifically off. He's done a lot to help me and guide me. He's an Indiana boy, so I have a different respect for him because of that. But in general, he's just a hard-nosed racer, and I've always appreciated him for that. Whether we argue on the racetrack or not, we're two hard-nosed racers."

Although Newman won the season-opening Daytona 500, the performance of his No. 12 team has clearly slipped since the years earlier this decade when he was a threat to win multiple races and the championship. His victory at Daytona is his lone triumph since September of 2005, and he currently stands 17th in driver points. He's endured two recent crew chief changes in addition to the retirement of his mentor, former Penske team president Don Miller.

Matt Borland, the crew chief with whom Newman won 12 races and 37 poles, is now at Haas as director of competition. "Having a friend over there is something to consider," Newman said. But what he's looking for most is performance, something his current team has lacked.

"The most important thing to me is performance," he said. "Winning the championship, achieving the goals outside of what I've done, which is a lot of poles and wins and winning the Daytona 500. So there are still a lot of things out there for me to achieve."

But can he do those things at Stewart-Haas, a team that could very well start 2009 with two cars outside the top 35 in owner points, and be forced to make races on speed for at least the first five events of next year? Stewart, as a past champion, has an automatic ticket in. Newman would have no such safety net. "Would I be reluctant? I would say I would consider the reluctance, but I'd also say I'm not exactly where I'd like to be right now," Newman said. "You have to listen to all options."

Newman said he has two other options other than Stewart's team and staying with Penske, and in one of those instances an ownership share has been discussed. He added that nothing has been decided, and he has set no deadline by which he has to make a decision. His current team owner, 71-year-old Roger Penske, has skipped some recent races while receiving treatment for a reported kidney ailment, but Newman said the two have still spoken "a little bit" over the past few weeks. The odds of him staying with Penske? "Honestly," he said, "I don't know."

Newman said the process of deciding where to race next year has brought "a sense of distortion" and is unlike anything he's been through before.

"It's not an easy decision," he said. "It's probably one of the hardest decisions I will make as a driver and maybe as a person, who knows. I'm sure Tony sat there and said the same thing, it's not an easy decision to make. It's not an easy answer that comes to you. I've had people tell me, sometimes it will be the simplest thing that makes sense, and that's it."