Tony Stewart bringing passion to new role as team owner

The most surprising thing Tony Stewart has learned since becoming a team owner, he says, is just how quickly he wanted to return to the Charlotte area, to his new digs, to be around “his guys.”

“Believe it or not, I went home for about 10 days and actually didn’t enjoy it as much,” Stewart says. “I almost felt homesick for wanting to be back in Charlotte. And that’s the first time since I’ve started in this series that I can remember feeling that way.”

Home for Stewart typically means Columbus, Ind., where he returned – moving into his boyhood home – some three years ago, in part to get out of the glare of the spotlight that follows the sport’s stars on and off the race track.

It wasn’t the only reason. Just one of several.

It’s an unusual, unexpected admission. Stewart, who ended a successful, 10-year tenure with Joe Gibbs Racing at the end of 2008 to become co-owner of the newly-renamed Stewart-Haas Racing, has always looked forward to the series’ annual end-of-season break. It provided a chance to get away from the hustle and bustle of the sport, to free oneself from the clutter and the responsibility.

While the pace of activities at various shops might slow a bit during the poorly named offseason, it continues nonetheless. For drivers, though, the seemingly endless cycle of testing and appearances and actual racing has finally come to an end.

And now Stewart says he actually “wanted” to get back to the Charlotte area?

“As soon as the season was over, you normally want to go home and get away from everything. I’ve been just the opposite,” he says. “I’ve been away and wanted to get back as soon as I could.

“I didn’t feel guilty that I wasn’t working, but that’s where I wanted to be. That’s where my mind was every day. Just being back with a new team and spending time with my guys has been relaxing. It’s a lot of work, but at the same time, that has been my relaxation.”

Of course, there is plenty for Stewart, the two-time Cup champion, to do in his new role. But he says much of his initial focus will be on learning more about the ownership side, the management end of a sport that burns millions and millions of cubic dollars each year.

There are decisions that have to be made to get the two-car team ready for Stewart and Ryan Newman for the 2009 season. And those decisions run the gamut, from personnel to power plants to the smallest parts and pieces that hold everything together. Putting together a talented staff, he says, should help make the transition into ownership less stressful.

“The good thing is that there are not a lot of those decisions that I have to make,” he says. “I think part of having this combination has been hiring the right people to do the right jobs. And that’s what I’ve learned from Joe [Gibbs].

“Obviously, if it’s a major, major decision it has to go through somebody up there [at the top], but having somebody like Bobby Hutchens on board, somebody that’s been a part of this sport for so long and been with a great organization like Richard Childress Racing, he knows what it takes. He knows more than I know about what it takes to build this race team and get it where it needs to be.”

Hutchens served as competition director at RCR before transitioning into the role of general manager for Earnhardt-Childress Racing Engines in 2007. He was Dale Earnhardt Inc.’s vice president of competition during the second half of 2008.

The face of the team, previously Haas CNC Racing, will have a decidedly different look for the 2009 season with two new drivers in Stewart and Newman, two new crew chiefs in Darian Grubb and Tony Gibson, as well as the addition of Hutchens.
 
But will the influx of new talent and new ideas be enough to raise the level of competition for the organization?

Although its drivers – which have included Jack Sprague, John Andretti, Jason Leffler, Ward Burton, Mike Bliss, Jeff Green, Johnny Sauter, Jeremy Mayfield, Max Papis, Scott Riggs, and Ken Schrader – have made 284 combined starts since 2002, there have been no wins. No top-five finishes. And only a single top-10.

Newman, 31, has been on something of a slide of his own, winning early in 2008 at Daytona, but finding himself shut out for the remainder of the year. A 13-time winner in Cup, he was a consistent top-10 performer until 2006, when he began a three-year run of missed opportunities. The opportunity to start fresh, he says, was too good to pass up.

Stewart’s own Cup record speaks for itself. Although he had only a single victory in 2008, it kept alive a streak of 10 years with at least one win for the two-time Cup champion.

Grubb stepped down as engineering manager at Hendrick Motorsports to take on the role of crew chief for Stewart and the No. 14 Chevrolet team. During his tenure at Hendrick, Grubb filled in for crew chief Chad Knaus in 2006, leading Jimmie Johnson to a pair of wins in four races, and he served as Casey Mears’ crew chief in 2007, leading Mears to a win at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

Gibson, crew chief for the Mark Martin/Aric Almirola tandem at Dale Earnhardt Inc. in 2008, will serve as crew chief for Newman and the team’s No. 39 effort.

Stewart says he expects his organization to contend – and to win. But even he admits he isn’t sure just how long that might take.

“It’s impossible to know what’s going to happen in the series even when you’ve been with a team for 10 years like we were with Joe and [team president] J.D. [Gibbs]," he says. “... We’re going to go to Daytona and do the best job we can, then go to California [Auto Club Speedway] the next week and do the best job we can there. That’s what our goal is every week.

“As long as we leave the race track each week knowing we gave 100 percent, that’s what we’re going to be happy with.”
 
Until then, Stewart will watch and learn as he adjusts to his new role. Like winning, it too may take some time.

“It’s like going to school for the fist time,” he says. “Every day that I go through the shop, I learn a new person or a new aspect of the operation that I didn’t know before.

“It’s going to be a long growing process – this isn’t going to be something that, a year from now, I’m going to know everything about it. But I’m really enjoying and looking forward to the learning process and learning how to make us successful.”