Relationship as it's always been for Stewart, Zipadelli

LOUDON, N .H. -- Greg Zipadelli spent four hours Monday poring over the videotape. He went over pit stops, examined his team's pit times, looked at everything that might have cost the No. 20 car those precious fractions of a second that can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

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Tony Stewart discusses post-race venting on his radio show.

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And what did he find? No obvious mistakes, certainly nothing that merited the over-the-radio chewing out that driver Tony Stewart delivered after last Sunday's storm-delayed event at Richmond International Raceway. The car of Kevin Harvick, being serviced in the stall directly ahead of them, might have blocked them in a bit, forced Stewart to exit at a sharper angle, and given Jimmie Johnson the opening he needed to win the race. If there's anywhere they lost time, the crew chief surmised, that might have been it.

"We were both frustrated that we didn't win," Zipadelli said Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, "but I'm not going to tear my team apart over something that was a marginal call as to whether or not my team had a good pit stop."

He didn't have to. Stewart did it for him, saying "we gave another one away today" over the team radio on the cool-down lap. Zipadelli wasn't in the mood to hear it. "Great attitude there, Smoke," he retorted, using his driver's nickname. "... Remember, we win and lose as a team. It was a great effort, OK? Enough of that crap."

That exchange received plenty of airplay on ESPN, and perhaps fed a perception among viewers that Stewart and Zipadelli -- whose 10-year relationship, the longest active driver/crew chief association in the Sprint Cup garage area, will end when Stewart leaves to form his own team for next season -- are at wit's end with one another. But both men, who can dish out their share of heated radio conversation, insist that nothing of the sort is true.

"What happened last Sunday that everybody's worried about?" asked Stewart, now with three runner-up finishes in his past six starts. "Have you ever listened to a scanner during a race? That's not even normal for us. That's less than you normally hear from drivers and crew chiefs. Normally, they're cussing each other out on the radio, and that's never really happened with Zippy and I, really. I don't know why everybody's making such a big deal about it. That's two guys that were talking on the radio that were competitive and that don't like to lose. I'd much rather have a crew chief that would get us fired up as me than a guy that will sit there and say, 'Yeah, yeah, it will be OK.' (Continued)