crew chief Matt Borland to Red Bull

[Chris]

This has been brewing for a couple weeks... kinda surprised no one has picked up and posted anything yet...
As of a couple days ago it was made final...
First

A shakeup is looming for the Roger Penske operation, with Toyota's Red Bull team reportedly making a run at crew chief Matt Borland to take the helm of Brian Vickers' team next season. Borland is #12-Ryan Newman's crew chief at Penske's.

Then

however, been told that Borland will not be with the #12 team at Phoenix, supposedly team engineer Mike Nelson will be Newman's crew chief for the last two races

and finally

Matt Borland, crew chief for Ryan Newman, will miss the final two races of the 2006 Nextel Cup season. Borland is taking "some personal time off," and team engineer Mike Nelson will lead Newman's efforts this weekend at Phoenix and next weekend at Homestead, a Penske Racing South spokesperson said Wednesday

SO I wonder if it's all about the money,... or is Newman hard to get along with??  RUsty always said he was a pain to deal with,.. didn't want to share team info, etc... and that was a big part of Team Penske's problem.  Now Borland leaves for what he says is "personal reason".  Is it personal he can't deal with Newman,.. or all about the money.
Needless to say, Newman has done pitiful this season,.. but he is highly thought of 'somewhere'... of course this comes from a team who signed AJ Allmendinger to a multi-year CUP deal without him ever running in a CUP race (then he went out and missed his first race by a mile)
just some thoughts I thunk 

[falcon325]

Hey Chris.  Good catch on the Borland thing.

>>RUsty always said he was a pain to deal with,.. didn't want to share team info, etc... and that was a big part of Team Penske's problem.<<

The word I heard on that whole 12 v. 2 communications deal is that the problem was Rusty. 

The 12 team would bust their butts and find some little edge.  They would dutifully share it with their teammates on the 2 team.  Before the sun set, Rusty would be on the phone to his two brothers.  And, soon after that, Rusty would have blabbed it all over the Winston Cup (old habit there) garage.  After a while, the 12 team decided not to share any more info with their loose-lipped "teammate." 

I don't understand why Penske didn't step in an say, "Hey guys, this you can share, but this information is proprietary." 

In spite of all the hyper-ventilation on the web, I've read that Brian Vickers is cool with being "locked out" of HMS skull sessions.  Unlike Rusty, Brian understands that there are some secrets that need to be kept.

[Chris]

yeah,.. there's two sides to every story..
never know what the truth is... one is as likely as the other.

I just peaked my interest that Rusty left with 'his' story,.. now someone else leaves with 'personal issues'...
Personal issues can be a range of things however...

[flamehothead]

I have bee a RUSTY WALLACE fane since the late 80's. From what I seen R.Newman won ALOT more races than R.Wallace did once he became part of the team. Take a look at R.Newman vs R.Wallace in the win column, BIG difference. And I mean after R.Newman came on board.

[Chris]

well... I can see it that way,... I can see it another way...
When you look at the "BIG" picture (lets say over both drivers last 5 years)
Sure Newman has won more races,.. I concede that point,... But look at how it all came about.  Newman won 8 races ALL in one season.  Basically he had ONE good season.
throw out that one good season and look at the whole,.. Newmans still won more races but only by a 4 to 2 margin.  And we know Rusty's career was winding down,.. and Newman was supposed to be the hot new commodity on the scene.  Just don't appear to have worked out that way.
Even with his "super season" when you count top 10's... Newman has 80 top 10's in his last 5 years,.. and Rusty has 72.  Thats pretty equal.

Newman's season this year has been dismal... Even at this point of the year he is 18th in the points,.. and and almost 1000 points out of 11th..... and almost 1400 behind the points leader (the old way)
I don't know why Borland is deciding to leave,... Maybe Red Bull is paying him booKoo bucks to go over there,... maybe Newman has had such a bad last few years (only three wins in last three years) he has decided thats as good as it gets... maybe theres some bad blod behind the scenes we don't know about...
Who knows,... something is going on... If all was happy in in the land of Penske,.. no one would be going anywhere.

[paulfan]

In an interview Tuesday on XM Ryan Newman said that an announcement would be made later in the week but that Matt would remain at Penske next year, but maybe not in his present capacity.   He wouldn't say anything further.

Specualtion from the callers was that he might become the director of competition as Penske doesn't presently have one.

[Chris]

the info I found on Jayski was 'fresh'... from today.

[smyler]

I'm not a Ryan fan but when you think of upper tier drivers he has to be on your short list.  If you were going to start a team from scratch and could choose 10 drivers I know he'd be on mine.

It really does seem odd that Ryan has had such a poor showing this year.  I wonder if they have slacked off or if so many other teams have just gotten better.  Probably just a combo of the both.  Roger can't be too happy about it, especially with the bonus he had to have paid to Kurt.  I'll be surprised if one of the 2 doesn't make it into the chase next year. 

Matt Borland always seemed like a class guy in the interviews I have seen.  It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.  If he does end up in the Toyota camp I think that will be quite a coup for them. 

Like sand through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives.