TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Amid a firestorm of rumors about his future plans, Tony Stewart acknowledged Thursday afternoon at Talladega Superspeedway that he had received offers to drive for other teams, with ownership options included.

Stewart said unconditionally that he had not asked Joe Gibbs Racing, his current team, for a release from the final year of his contract, which runs through 2009. Stewart did say, though, that he has presented several "what if?" scenarios to his current bosses.

“

Right now we're going to do our due diligence on all the offers and try to figure out the best option for us.

”

-- TONY STEWART

"Obviously, it's a shock, when they don't know anything about it," Stewart said of the reaction at JGR. "But we wanted to be up-front and honest with them and say, 'Listen, this is what's being presented to us.' "
• (Audio: Stewart discusses his future)

Stewart said last summer he was interested in signing an extension with the team he's driven for since 1998. But contract talks moved slowly, with Stewart saying in January he was in no rush to get a deal done.

"Like I said, they've been such great partners all along that it's not something -- like I said, there's nothing broke at Joe Gibbs Racing. There's nothing that needed to be fixed. There wasn't a problem over there. So we felt like the best thing to do was be up-front and honest with them from day one about it and at least let them know what was being offered to us and let 'em know what was going on and why we were taking longer to discuss our contract with them than what we had planned."

Stewart said Thursday he has not ruled out staying with JGR, but when he began negotiating a new contract, other teams approached him with new opportunities. The same thing happened back in 2003, when Stewart was able to leverage several deals -- including one from Chip Ganassi -- to secure a more lucrative contract with Gibbs.

"A wise person told me it never cost a dime to listen, so right now we're all ears," Stewart said of the latest offers. "Right now it's just a matter of figuring out what we want to do, and being smart. We've had a great run at Joe Gibbs Racing. It doesn't mean it's over. We're just going to look at everything that's out there."

Stewart acknowledged that his representatives had met with Haas CNC Racing to discuss the possibility of buying into that team. Since then, Stewart said, he has received other offers.

Haas CNC Racing purchases the engines for its Chevrolets from Hendrick Motorsports. Stewart, who drove Pontiacs and Chevys (both General Motors products) before Gibbs switched to Toyotas for the start of the 2008 season, fields Chevrolets for his own USAC teams. Chevy and General Motors also are sponsors at Eldora Speedway, Stewart's half-mile dirt track in Rossburg, Ohio.

Joe Gibbs racing president J.D. Gibbs, however, expects Stewart to remain with his current No. 20 Home Depot Toyota team through the final year of his contract. When rumors of Stewart's sooner-than-expected departure began to surface, Gibbs called a staff meeting at the team's race shop in Huntersville, N.C.

"We talked to our team guys today, and I think Tony and our team's on the same page," Gibbs said Thursday during an interview on Sirius' Tradin' Paint. "Our goal is here over the next couple of years -- '08, '09, that's when Tony signed to race with us -- that we're going to go full-bore and hopefully win a bunch of races and championships together.

"Our hope is, long-term, when you do that, this is the spot he chooses to retire. The reality is that we only control the next couple years, and we went through this the last time in his last contract negotiation. He had a lot of options then, too, and a lot of things out there.

"Our hope is we do our job, and he retires here." (Continued)