Hornish says he hasn't been told of plans for Penske's No. 12

By Jared Turner - SceneDaily Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

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Sam Hornish Jr. says there have been no discussions of him moving over from Penske Racing’s No. 77 Sprint Cup car to replace Ryan Newman in the team’s No. 12 car next season and that he has been given no indication of who will.

Penske Racing announced last week that Newman would leave the company at the end of the 2008 season for another team.

That team is widely speculated to be the new Stewart-Haas Racing, which will absorb Haas CNC Racing at the end of the season with Tony Stewart coming on board as part owner and one of the team’s two drivers.

“As far as who [team owner] Roger [Penske] is hiring or any of that stuff I don’t have ideas,” Hornish said Tuesday in reference to the vacancy at Penske. “I’m sure with Roger’s resume, we’ll get another spectacular person in there.”

One driver considered to be in the running to replace to Newman is David Stremme, who currently serves as a test driver for Penske Racing and competes in the Nationwide Series for Rusty Wallace Racing.

Stremme, who drove full time in Cup for Chip Ganassi Racing in 2006 and 2007, has helped ease the burden of testing on Penske’s current three-car lineup of Hornish, Newman and Kurt Busch, Hornish said.

“David’s been really great to me, calling me up, asking me if there’s anything that he can do to help me out," said Hornish, noting that data gleaned from the test team has been helpful in areas such as parts and fuel mileage. "[He's] maybe giving me little tidbits of information and what he thought about certain things [with me] going to [tracks] for the first time like Pocono and Indianapolis and even some of those places that you don’t really see anything like it anywhere else. It’s been nice to have somebody to ask some questions.

"Obviously, Kurt and Ryan are tremendously busy because they’re Cup drivers themselves and have all of that going on so David’s probably been a little bit more accessible.”

Hornish, who moved over from the IndyCar Series to run the full Cup schedule this season, says he wasn’t surprised by the news that Newman would leave Penske at the end of 2008.

“It was obviously something that reading in articles you could see that it was kind of heading in that direction and I wish Ryan all the best not only for the rest of this year but throughout the rest of his career and whatever comes up different,” Hornish said. “The way that I looked at it, I’ve got to be a little bit thankful Ryan’s been there as somebody I can bounce different questions [off] or ask him different things about stock-car racing.

"Obviously when it’s someone that’s been in the Penske organization as long as he has, it’s something to see him leave but we have to continue to move forward.”