Tony Stewart pleased with opening season of ownership; says championship possible

Tony Stewart wondered what his future held.

Making the decision to leave Joe Gibbs Racing and take 50 percent ownership of what would become Stewart-Haas Racing certainly couldn't have been easy. As he looked down the road, the two-time NASCAR Cup champion saw a series of obstacles in his path as he attempted to transition into an owner/driver role for the 2009 Sprint Cup season.

“A year ago I was about half scared to death," Stewart says.

Not anymore. Just a few months into his role as NASCAR Sprint Cup owner/driver, Stewart is tightening his hold on the lead in the standings. He has gone from a guy taking a gamble to one leading the championship standings. Does he think his team can go all the way and win the title?

"I don’t think there’s any other team, if they were leading the points, wouldn’t feel like they have a shot at it at this point," he says. "I feel like we have just as good of a shot as anybody else that’s out there right now. I’m really proud of our organization. I’m proud of our relationship with Hendrick Motorsports and how we have worked with them this year. It has been a much smoother transition than I thought it would be, and [I’m] really proud of the way everybody is working together. I do feel like we’ve got a shot.”

And why shouldn't he? Although he had been a team owner in other motorsports series, deciding to take on that role in the Cup ranks - while also driving for the team - offered an unparalleled challenge.

But well into his first season, Stewart appears to have mastered it. He's leading the points for the sixth consecutive week and heading to a track, Chicagoland Speedway, where he has won in the past. He has surrounded himself with a supporting cast that has allowed him to shake his ownership role on weekends when he needs to focus on driving. He enjoys a technical alliance with Hendrick Motorsports. He was joined by teammate Ryan Newman and has watched as Newman's team overcame some early setbacks to climb to seventh in the standings.

A year ago, when Stewart announced his plans at Chicago, it might have been hard to predict that much early success.

"It was hard to anticipate what exactly the reality of the changes were going to be and what the rules were going to be," he says. "We thought we had an idea of what it was going to be like, and it hasn’t disappointed us, but it’s been smoother than I thought it was going to be. At that time, we didn’t have a competition director, we hadn’t hired a crew chief. We had a lot of variables that were unknown at that point.

"Once we got these key people in place, it has made my job a lot easier and been a lot smoother than I thought it would be at this point. … We’ve exceeded our expectations to this point. Not that we really set goals and said this is where we want to be at any stage of it, but I think this is much higher than we possibly could have expected it to be at this point in the season.”

And that makes it a little difficult to criticize or second-guess anything about the team's effort.

Stewart lavishes the credit for the organization's strong performance on the men building the team. Competition director Bobby Hutchens and crew chiefs Darian Grubb (for Stewart) and Tony Gibson (for Newman) have worked to rebuild the group that spent last year trying to keep its two cars in the top 35 in owner points as it competed under the Haas CNC Racing banner.

Stewart also freely admits that it has been a difficult journey and one that varies greatly from his experience as an owner in other series.

“It’s hard to sit here leading the points and say that you would do anything different," Stewart says. "It has all been hard, but it has all been fun at the same time. I don’t know that I would have changed anything. It was fun going through the process because it was like I said about starting my open-wheel teams and opening my race tracks and hiring people for that, it’s just 10 times bigger than that. There’s more people, there’s more positions that needed filled and obviously the challenges along with going - you had meetings with people at midnight at the shop when you knew nobody else was going to be there so the rumors didn’t get started and stuff leaking out that you were even talking to people.

"That’s just little things that I never had to do with my open-wheel teams and with the race tracks, but at this level you have to do to ensure that you are keeping the security of what’s going on in place. I don’t know. Like I say, it has been such a smooth transition that there hasn’t been that one hang-up or hiccup that’s happened that has put us in a tail spin.”

Certainly, Newman's early struggles were a challenge. But after finishing 22nd or worse in the opening four races, the team has rallied to its top-12 position and is contending for a berth in the Chase For The Sprint Cup.

"Ryan has absolutely been like a warrior through every weekend," Stewart says. "He has battled through adversity at every race, and that really makes me proud, not only of him as a teammate and a driver but also of his crew on the U.S. Army car and how they're able to overcome each weekend. They've been able to do things, I think, battling adversity during the races that I think a lot of teams can't do and get the result and the outcome that they've had."

For his part, Newman seems impressed with his new teammate/boss.

He has returned to the top form he showed in his opening seasons with Penske Racing. From 2002 through 2005, Newman finished no worse than seventh in the standings, but has not been in the top 10 since then.

So not only is he pleased by his return to the top, he's also enjoying his relationship with Stewart.

"Our friendship is definitely important," he said. "As I stated, our friendship off the race track to me weighs sometimes more than our friendship on the race track.

"We have to compete against each other, which we try to do our best at to make sure we don't penalize each other for the way we race each other, but the bottom line is just getting along off the race track, it's huge for me, just gives us something else to talk about besides a right front swing or a sway bar."

Aside from their relationship, Newman is impressed with Stewart's management skills.

"I'd say overall just his ability to manage the people and get the right people, which is not an easy thing to do," he said. "But his level-headedness, his calmness when it comes to the different situations, just how he has adapted himself from a driver to a driver/car owner is pretty amazing.

"I think that's the same thing that a lot of people have asked, just like was asked earlier, what's it like to be a driver/owner in your situation and be successful. It takes a big person to do that."

The organization thus far appears to have silenced the critics and shocked many in the Cup garage with its success. While other teams point to the Hendrick alliance as a key component, drivers are clearly surprised by what Stewart and company are accomplishing.

"They’re doing a better job than the Hendrick bunch is," Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch says. "The 14 [of Tony Stewart] has been kicking their butt every week."

Drivers agree that it is the people used to build Stewart-Haas, as well as the talent of the drivers, that has vaulted this organization to the top tier of the sport.

"It has been tremendous to watch those guys come from nowhere and develop a team and cherry-pick some of the top quality people at Hendrick, yet get them all under the same roof and get the best out of them," Penske Racing's Kurt Busch says. "And they've done it in a short amount of time. It has been quite remarkable to watch.

"We all knew that Tony was very competitive, and yet it was going to be a matter of time before this team developed. I don't think anybody expected this team to be as strong as they are right now. So it's definitely neat to watch. It creates in the back of anybody's mind, 'Hey, maybe I can go and do this.' But I think you need to find special people to do it. That's what Tony has done at Stewart-Haas Racing, finding all these great people to help him get to where he is today."

Even Stewart seems staggered by the level of success.

A year ago, he wondered where this path would lead. Now, he's discovering it could take him to a championship.

How large of an accomplishment would he consider that to be?

"I think what we’re grading it off of is our consistency each week, and if we’re still consistent at the end of the year and still just not good enough, then we’re still going to consider it a good year," he said. "We’ll just work harder to see if we can make it better for next year. I think we’ll have to see what those last 10 races are and see what the scenarios are that go with it to really, accurately evaluate where we’re at and whether we’re successful or not.”