Tony Stewart talks sponsors, car numbers and more!

[DebWilliams-GFN]

By Deb Williams

INDIANAPOLIS (July 25, 2008) – For the rest of the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup season, Tony Stewart may often feel like a ping-pong ball bouncing back-and-forth between being a driver for Joe Gibbs Racing and a new team owner with Stewart-Haas Racing.

JGR is located in Huntersville, N.C., and Stewart-Haas Racing is in Kannapolis, N.C. The main highway between the two is N.C 73, and the drive, depending on the traffic, is 30 to 40 minutes. By the end of the year, Stewart's vehicle probably will be able to travel between the two shops on its own.

“I want this to be successful and I want it to be successful right off the bat,” Stewart said about his new Cup team Friday during a press conference at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “To do that, the work has to start now and I’m ready for that and ready to spend as much time between Gibbs' and Haas’ shops as we have to right now. Whatever it takes to get it done, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Next year, Stewart's Chevrolets will bear the No. 14 – the same number sported by his childhood hero A.J. Foyt during his driving days – and sponsorship from Office Depot and Old Spice. The other car in the Stewart-Haas Racing stable will carry the No. 4, the number formerly used by the Morgan-McClure team. Long-time Stewart employee Eddie Jarvis handled the number acquisitions from NASCAR.

“We looked at what car numbers were available and once we decided internally what numbers we wanted to look at, Eddie went to NASCAR and worked through that process with them,” Stewart explained. “We got our first choice in the No. 4 and the No. 14, so it wasn’t a situation where we didn’t get the numbers we wanted. It was more making sure that we understood and knew 100 percent what Morgan-McClure’s intentions were going to be and what they had planned. We didn’t want to take their number away from them if they had intentions of coming back. That was something that was a priority for us.”

Now, Stewart must concentrate on getting his key people hired so they can put the rest of the organization together.

“It’s going back to what Joe Gibbs always said,” Stewart commented. “You hire the right people to do the right job. You hire that team manager and that floor manager and those people that know who the right people are to get for the race team and, hopefully, our name attached to it and us driving the cars next year, that’s, hopefully, my side of it and I can help attract some of these people to want to come over and work with us.”

In the driver department, Stewart said his short list for his team's second car currently stood at three. Ryan Newman is reportedly one of Stewart's top candidates.

“There are not a lot of guys available to begin with that we think would fit the program,” Stewart said. “It’s down to three at the most and realistically two. It’s about trying to figure out if they are going to be the right person for the organization and which one of them is really interested in us.”

Stewart, who moved from the Charlotte, N.C., area back to his Indiana home a few years ago, realizes he now will spend a great deal of time in the Tar Heel state and his work days must begin before 11 a.m.

“I’m going to start with 10:30 a.m. and try to get acclimated to that,” Stewart said. “It’s going to be like an eight-step process to try to get down to a reasonable hour in the morning. But, believe it or not, for the last two weeks, I’ve been up between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m. every morning and that was even on vacation and I was waking up that early.

“You realize (it has to be that way) and you budget your time better. Just since Chicago my sleep has been better and I wake up in the morning and I feel more refreshed and I think even after today that will improve even more. That’s still the old short-track driver in me that can’t get used to getting up before 11 a.m. or 12 o’clock.

“When I was down in Charlotte, I didn’t necessarily go to the race shop every day at Gibbs, but it’s a little different deal when it’s your own operation and you get up in the morning and you know that you’ve got stuff that you have to do, so it makes it a little easier to get up in the morning and get going.”

Foyt has owned NASCAR and Indy Car teams, with the latter providing him with more success. Stewart said he had not yet discussed NASCAR team ownership with the first driver to win four Indianapolis 500s, but he was “excited” to hear his perception on it.

“Obviously, he’s been involved in Indy Car racing for 50 years now, so he’s been through the highs and lows of the car ownership side,” Stewart continued. “Obviously, I value our friendship. I’m going to value his opinion on that, too, and definitely listen to what he’s got to say about it.

“We’ve got the same personality. I think we have such a high level of respect for each other that when we’ve disagreed, it normally doesn’t last very long. I couldn’t count on one hand the times we’ve had disagreements with each other. Normally, we’re the ones that are starting the disagreements between other people and get them going. It’s like the commercials that this costs this much, that costs that much, and the rest is priceless. That’s what my relationship with him has been like.

“Somebody was giving me a hard time the other day when I was telling him that about three weeks ago I was on my tractor for about seven hours on my property, and this buddy of mine said, 'Yeah, you sound just like my old man.' I asked him what he meant and he said, 'Oh, you don’t remember? He rolled the bulldozer over.' I’m thinking, 'Oh my God, I am starting to get more and more like him as this goes on.' And it’s not planned that way, that’s just what happens. We just enjoy the same things and it’s like we were twin brothers that were born 30 or 20 years apart. But I’m proud of that. If you can be a lot like your childhood hero and not try to live that life, and that’s the way it works out, I’m proud of that.”