Stewart straddles line as Toyota pilot, Chevy owner

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- These days, where there is Smoke there is Toyota.

But sometimes Chevrolet remains in the cloudy picture as well, when it comes to Tony Stewart. Long ago nicknamed "Smoke," Stewart now drives Toyotas for Joe Gibbs Racing in the Sprint Cup Series. The Gibbs operation made the switch to Toyotas following last season after running Chevrolets for the previous six years and for 11 of the past 16 (being in Pontiacs for the five-year stretch in between).

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But Stewart also is the proud owner of Tony Stewart Racing, based in Brownsburg, Ind. He opened a 25,200-square-foot shop there last year shortly after announcing that he had signed a three-year contract with Chevrolet to sponsor three USAC teams and in the World of Outlaw Series through 2009. According to sources, Chevy also has an option to extend the deal beyond '09.

So now Stewart is left at times to promote Toyota as a driver on one hand, and Chevy as a car owner on the other. No one should be surprised, since Stewart may be the most complex personality on the Cup circuit.

But maybe this arrangement is not quite as complex as it appears at first glance. When Stewart competed in the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals this past weekend in Tulsa, Okla., Toyota Racing Development general manager Lee White was spotted in Stewart's pits -- even though Stewart was driving a Chevy in that competition and fielded four other entries for Tony Stewart Racing.

Toyota had only five entries overall in the Chili Bowl, which began with 296 combatants trying to race their way into a 24-car main event (two of Toyota's five made it, finishing second and fourth, respectively).

"I'll be very honest: our preference would be if Dave Darland, Josh Wise, Jason Leffler or one of those guys won that event [driving a Toyota]," White said. "But if they can't win it, I'm pulling for Tony. I don't care if he's driving a Chevrolet, a Kia or a Mahindra tractor.

"If he wins, we win. It's just that simple."

White's point is that soon, if not already, whenever folks see Stewart's face connected with racing, they are going to know he drives a Toyota in the Cup Series. That belief is key to the manufacturer's entire marketing campaign connected to getting JGR to make what at first seemed a controversial switch.

Stewart downplays the fact that he owns and sometimes drives Chevys on the open-wheel side, yet works exclusively for Toyota now on the Cup side.

"When we started the USAC programs, we went to Mopar right away -- so I was driving a Chevy on the Cup side then and all of our open-wheel teams were Mopar," Stewart said. "So it's no different than what I've had to do in the past with it. It's really not that big a deal."

That is the way Stewart appears to be approaching the Gibbs switch from Chevys to Toyotas as well. He said that especially with the full-time switch this season to the Car of Tomorrow for all Cup cars, making a change in manufacturers is not as dramatic as it may appear.

White

"In the big picture it seems like a huge change because we switched manufacturers," Stewart said. "But if we went ahead and made this change a year ago, it would have been a lot more dramatic than it is this year with the car that's the same for everybody. It's just literally a decal package and a motor package, for the most part. I think it's less of a change this year than it would have been in the past."

Stewart went so far as to assert that he felt little or no difference between the Chevrolet he drove in the past and the Toyota he drove during the first day and a half of single-car-run Preseason Thunder testing at Daytona International Speedway.

"I wouldn't know the difference so far. It's hard to say," Stewart said. "I mean, you've got to keep in mind that you're on a 2.5-mile track and you're holding it wide open. You're not going to really feel it until you get around other cars. Any driver that says they can is a heck of a lot better driver than me, because I can't tell the difference.

"I couldn't tell the difference when we went to [test in Las] Vegas. You're not going to know. You're not talking about 20- or 30-horsepower gains to where you're going to feel it. You're only talking five- to eight-horsepower difference, and you're not going to feel that. Any driver who says he can feel that on the racetrack is lying to you."

Meanwhile, truth has been the best policy in dealing with Stewart, according to White.

In addition to cheering on Stewart in Chevys at the Chili Bowl, White also flew to Tony Stewart Racing headquarters a couple of weeks before JGR announced its alignment with Toyota this past September. White said he made the trip to put Stewart at ease, and did so by "shooting the bull" with him as Stewart's 50 or so employees worked on Chevrolet open-wheel cars all around them.

"If Tony had any reservations about racing Toyota in Cup, there wouldn't be a Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. There is no question about that," White said. "I flew into Indiana and spent a whole day with Tony in his shop before the announcement to make sure he understood who I was and who we were, that he was comfortable with this deal.

"There is no pressure from us for him to come out and promote us. As far as his NASCAR racing, he'll do anything he needs to do."

As far as Stewart's commitments on the open-wheel side to Chevy, White insisted that Toyota will not stand in Stewart's way.

"He has an agreement with Chevrolet. I think it's great he's honoring that and they're honoring that," White said. "We would not want to get accused of coercing Tony to break a contract.

"We have teams that race against Tony in Midgets and Sprints. Our first preference is one of those guys wins the races. But if one of those guys can't win the race, I'm a Tony Stewart fan. I'm pulling for Tony. Maybe that's a personal thing. I'm a racer, Tony's a racer. I have a deep appreciation for what he does in all things racing."