Owner role fitting Stewart perfectly as season nears

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- There's no question Sprint Cup team ownership agrees with Tony Stewart, and the two-time Cup champion put the latest exclamation point on that fact Friday night at Preseason Thunder Fan Fest at Daytona International Speedway.

Stewart, looking remarkably more svelte and clean cut than a year before when he drove the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, spent the whole evening at the speedway and was low-key and genial the whole time, despite experiencing some owner-from-afar angst.

Ready, set, go

There's no testing at Preseason Thunder, so Ryan Newman is using the extra time to get acclimated with his new team at Stewart-Haas Racing.

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On Thursday night, one of Stewart's USAC Midget drivers, Tracy Hines, won his qualifying feature for Saturday night's Chili Bowl Midget Nationals in Tulsa, Okla., and Friday night his other pilot, Levi Jones, finished second to also make the main event.

Stewart's general dislike of media functions is legendary, but he laughed when asked his level of irritation at having to be with the Cup media in Daytona versus the Chili Bowl.

"Oh gosh -- that's an easy [question] to answer -- I'm missing it [Friday] night," Stewart said, "so I'm trying to keep my cell phone close to figure out how [Jones] is running."

All kidding aside, Stewart reiterated that he didn't feel he'd have any more difficulty separating his driver's role of his own No. 14 Chevrolet from his team owner's on the Cup level any more than he'd experienced problems while running numerous open-wheel teams and operating Eldora Speedway as well as owning a piece of a couple other short tracks.

People are the key, the owner of Stewart-Haas Racing said.

[It'll be] real easy -- once we leave [North Carolina] on the airplane I put the driver hat on," Stewart said. "Still go watch my open-wheel teams like I always do. I think that's the great thing, the way we've got it set up now is that when I show up at the race track all I have to worry about is driving. We've got a good system with [director of competition] Bobby Hutchens and the two crew chiefs involved -- I don't have to worry about being a car owner.

"When it comes to all the open-wheel teams, on the weekends when we're racing we've come up with a pretty good system over the years with those guys -- somebody is sending me messages every event letting me know how the heat races went, if there's a caution in the main event [so] even though I'm distanced from the other teams while they're on the road, I still get the updates and know what's going on, and it really works out good for us." (Continued)