Stewart sees both sides of issues as an owner, driver (cont'd)

Q: One of your former open-wheel drivers, Josh Wise, is under consideration by Michael Waltrip for the No. 00 car next year. What challenges does he face?

Stewart: He's been running a lot of ARCA races this year. And he's run some Truck races and run really well. I think he's shown a lot of patience and intelligence behind the wheel. He was always good, no matter whether he was on the pavement or dirt with us, and that gave me the confidence when Michael came and asked if he was ready. Absolutely. Michael wanted to put him in the ARCA car and the Truck for this year and I was more than confident that was a very adequate move. Michael has been here a lot longer than I have. He's going to know by watching these guys and seeing their talent and what they're doing on the racetrack and knowing if it's the right time. Every race I've seen Josh run with the ARCA car or the Truck, I've felt like he's done an exceptionally good job. It wouldn't surprise me to see him in a Cup car next year at all.

Q: Another one of your drivers, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., just signed with Jack Roush. In your position as a car owner, are there things that you can work with young drivers on to get them ready for the next level?

Stewart: It's hard to lose good guys like that. We had Jay Drake, who went on to the Indy Pro Series, Josh and Ricky ... all these guys have a ton of talent. I look at it as an honor that we've been able to help them get to a level they want to go to. It was like when I ran for Steve Lewis. He had a lot guys come from that No. 9 midget, and that's what made his team so elite, because people knew if they ran well in his car it was going to give them their best shot of moving forward. It's neat to make everything come full circle, being a car owner and helping these guys get their shot, too.

Q: Now that you've run the COT on the plate track, what's your opinion of it?

Stewart: It drives just as good as the other cars did. Anytime you put on a restrictor plate, they've got us slowed down speed-wise enough that handling isn't an issue anyway. You can run on the apron if you have to. We got pushed on the apron in the middle of Turns 1 and 2 once and didn't have any trouble driving the car. It's just finding the package that can get us to where we're more relying on ourselves and not relying on everybody else.

Q: The old car has just three more races left. Do you have any nostalgia for it?

Stewart: No, I'm just trying to buy a couple of them so I've got some dirt ARCA cars to run in the next couple of years.

Q: Can you get them cheap now?

Stewart: I'm trying to. J.D. [Gibbs] and I battle on the price still.

Q: Some teams are asking their drivers who aren't in the Chase to pull over and let a teammate who is in pass them for top-five finishes. Does that bother you?

Stewart: Yeah, I don't really like that aspect of it. But there is nothing you can do about it. It kind of is what it is. It goes back to really the only thing that I've disagreed on with the Chase. You've got 31 other guys that can dictate who wins the championship and who doesn't, literally, by those 31 guys. We need to have our own point structure where it's first through 12th for us every week. We're not racing those other guys for points anyway, so why should they be dictating where we're at amongst each other? If you've got five guys in between two Chase guys, it shouldn't matter -- especially if three of them are teammates of one guy that's in the Chase and that guy lets three of them go to protect this guy's spot. That's the only thing I really don't like about our Chase rules.

It's like the old points. If you only knock me out of the way in one race of 36, the effect it had was a lot less. In 10 weeks, and the points being so much tighter now, those five points here and there can be like 50 points in the old system. It's much more of an impact now, especially with the fields being as close and as tight as they are now. You want the guys to win the championship, you want them to earn it, not have a teammate give him those spots.

Q: What about the qualifying rules to get rid of provisionals?

Stewart: I think it's a tough situation. NASCAR is the only one that understands it fully. You've got to remember you're asking a driver, and luckily I own some race teams so I kind of understand what we're talking about and why. But when you've got multi-million dollar companies coming into the sport and expecting to see their teams run say, the Daytona 500, if you've got a team that puts out three other cars just for that one event to make the show and make money off the event, if one of those major sponsors misses it because of something like that, it's hard for some of these smaller teams. Or if you have a mistake, if you blow an engine and miss the show because of that, I don't know that it's fair to that driver and team that support every race and try to make every show. It's a tough balance.

It's kind of like the point structure in the Chase. I'm not sure there is an easy solution to that because you look at it from the owner's standpoint and the sponsor's standpoint you understand why they do it, but you also understand it from somebody like Boris Said's standpoint, who is trying to make it in and is on the provisional pole at Daytona earlier and gets rained out and has to go home. You see it from both sides. I'm not sure there is any good solution to it at this point, at least not from a driver's standpoint. You've got to ask somebody a lot smarter than me that question.