Stewart OK with managing dual roles as season ends (cont'd)

Stewart is owner of Eldora Speedway, a popular dirt track in Rossburg, Ohio, and also fields teams in the USAC and World of Outlaws series. So it is with that in mind that he adamantly insisted his current position is not all that unique to him.

That's why he scoffs at those who suggest perhaps forming his own team in the middle of this season for next year and beyond has served as a distraction for him and the No. 20 team he will drive for through the end of this season.

"I've said that from Day One, that it hasn't been a distraction," Stewart said. "When I come here on the weekends, I take that hat off for the week and put that off to the side and I focus on what we're doing here with the Home Depot cars. It hasn't been a distraction for me because when I get here, I'm only worried about one thing. You can only do one thing at a time.

"When we get back on Sunday, I take my Home Depot hat off and I start worrying about the Office Depot/Old Spice team and what we can be doing to get ready for next year. It's been easy from that standpoint."

It helped that Stewart broke a season-long winless streak by winning at Talladega on Oct. 5. Stewart has won at least two races every season since beginning his Cup driving career with JGR in 1999, and captured championships in 2002 and 2005 while driving the No. 20.

"You want to win every week and that's the goal of this team every week," Stewart said. "We feel like we should have had three or four of these easily by now [this season]. But we're just happy we finally got that first one, obviously. It would've been a big shock to have a shutout season, so at least Talladega kept us from that."

And there are still three races remaining, including this Sunday's event at Texas, next Sunday's race in Phoenix and the finale at Homestead the week after that. Then it will be time to focus completely on his new role as team owner at Stewart-Haas Racing.

Asked if he thought this offseason coming up would be the busiest of his career, Stewart laughed heartily.

"Oh, I can promise you that. There's no doubt," he added. "There's not really going to be an offseason. We're going to work from Monday after Homestead all the way through until we get to Daytona [next February] -- and then the work is not going to stop after we get to Daytona, either. We're going to stay real busy."

By then, he should be even more used to it than he is now.