Stewart goes 'old school,' improves on car at Dover

DOVER, Del. -- Since he assumed half-ownership of Stewart-Haas Racing, former two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart has been noticeably more agreeable, mellower individual around every Sprint Cup venue this season.

Friday at Dover International Speedway, five minutes after spending 90 minutes trying to dial his No. 14 Chevrolet in for qualifying for Sunday's Autism Speaks 400, Stewart's patience was tested during his media briefing.

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In his 10-year career with Joe Gibbs Racing, Stewart swept the 2000 season's two Dover stops, after qualifying 16th and 27th, respectively. Since the current "new car" came into use in 2007, however, Stewart's finished 40th, ninth, 41st and 11th here.

Stewart's 30th on Friday's practice sheet perfectly forecast his 31st-place qualifying effort, but on Saturday he improved to 11th in the morning practice and was 13th in Happy Hour, running a total of 83 laps.

His "issue" was with even having to deal with the media Friday. After four simple questions about his experiences at Dover, the perspective broadened when Stewart was asked about the upcoming Goodyear tire test at Indianapolis.

Stewart, who came into the weekend second in the Sprint Cup driver standings and thus must attend a weekly media briefing, consecutively was asked if he was going to the test, and could he talk about it?

"I am going, yes," Stewart said. "What do you want me to say about it?"

One way in which Stewart resembles Dale Earnhardt -- and even his current teammate, Ryan Newman -- is that he demands a little effort, and a little thought, from his interviewers.

"Well, did they invite you because they know they respect your opinion?" he was asked.

"Well, we're going," Stewart said. "We'll just wait and see what happens. I mean, there are a lot of guys going Tuesday and Wednesday and we're going Monday and Tuesday to do the pre-test. So we're just trying to figure out what we can do to help."

It was on from there, as Stewart was asked to assess his first 12 races as an owner/driver.

"Just look at the stats," he said, laughing. "Just read what we say every week -- we say the same thing every week. All you have to do is just look at the last nine or 10 weeks and that'll tell you the whole story of what we think on that. We've said that enough, I think."

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A transcript doesn't do some questions justice, but Stewart made no effort to figure out if his questioner was either confused or just plain ignorant when he was asked "is the team working better with Hendrick Motorsports this year than in the past?"

"I didn't work with them in the past, so how am I going to know that?" Stewart said. "When you haven't worked with them before this year, you're not going to know how it was in the past. All I can go off of is what we've done this year with them, which has been great.

"We've had a great relationship with them and I enjoy working with them, so far. So it's hard to say what it was like there before you run with them."

The media, undeterred, asked Stewart one more question about he and Newman's car setups, then asked about Eldora Speedway, the Ohio short track Stewart owns where the fifth annual Prelude to the Dream dirt late-model charity event will be held on Wednesday.

Stewart's patience appeared to be getting short when he was asked about his entrepreneurial success, which he attributed to putting good people in the right places, but then "how do you find those people?"

"Oh, we sit at an Ouija board all day," Stewart said.

"Do you have a better answer?" Stewart was asked.

"No, I don't -- we just work at it," Stewart said. "I mean, it's just like [Saturday]. We're trying to figure out how to make our race cars go faster and people want me to theorize about this and that. I'm still trying in my mind how to get my race car to go faster right now."

On the plus, "calmer Tony" side, Stewart did answer eight more questions, some in depth and some not so much; but he hit "tilt" when he was asked if everything he had going on overwhelmed him?

"No, I get overwhelmed with all the stuff that I'm asked to do while I'm trying to worry about driving a race car; that's what gets overwhelming," Stewart said. "I've sat here and I've talked about Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. and I've talked about Thunder Road and I've talked about Eldora and I've talked about the business side -- and I'm still trying to figure out what I've got to do on the driver's side right now.

"That's a perfect example of how overwhelming this part of it is. It's always about something else that doesn't pertain to what you're doing, a lot of times."

Finally, Stewart refused to elaborate on the post-race text message he sent to Coca-Cola 600 race winner David Reutimann this past Monday at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

"I didn't do that for everybody to know about that, I just did it for me and him," Stewart said. "It was more to congratulate him because I like David."