Why Stewart-Haas can win a Cup Series championship

I've known for weeks -- heck, more than a month -- that I was going to owe not only Tony Stewart but his entire Stewart-Haas Racing organization an apology.

The lucky thing for me is that Stewart doesn't care about accepting apologies, or even over-analyzing success. He's put the people in place, and man, he's letting those horses run.

Pocono win sure bet of more to come ...

There will be more victories and memories and statistics of note for Stewart-Haas Racing down the road, says Joe Menzer.

• Complete story
• Race Chatter: Stewart
• Stewart wins at Pocono

He's totally focused on winning a championship, and at this point it looks like Stewart has just as good a chance to win one this season -- with either of his teams -- as anyone named Johnson, Edwards, Gordon or Busch has.

And if Stewart does, that'll be cause for a standing ovation, never mind an apology. Those will be buried in their Chevrolets' dust.

The likelihood of eating crow became more and more apparent as week after week of the 2009 season passed -- and not only did the performance of Stewart's No. 14 Chevrolet not fade, it continued to blossom.

And supporting it like a dogged World War II wingman was teammate Ryan Newman, whose No. 39's early season whiffs could've knocked a lesser organization to its knees and their program into "building for 2010 mode" only a quarter of the way into the schedule.

But here we are, just past the halfway mark to the cutoff for the Chase, and where's Stewart-Haas? Stewart's team has been to Victory Lane twice -- including its first points win at Pocono -- and leads the series in top-five finishes (tied with Jeff Gordon) and top-10s from atop the point standings.

And Newman, who had a couple of startling breakout years with Penske Racing, but then seemed to slip into competent but far from scintillating doldrums the past couple years? He jumped to fourth in the standings after finishing fifth at Pocono, his sixth consecutive top-eight finish, with five of them top-fives.

Yup, I'd say it's time for that apology. It's maybe even a bit overdue.

It doesn't make me feel one doggoned bit better that I'm in pretty good company when it came to underestimating the reclamation project executed by Stewart, his business managers Brett Frood and Eddie Jarvis, competition gurus Bobby Hutchens and Matt Borland and their crew chiefs Darian Grubb and Tony Gibson and Haas CNC Racing partners Gene Haas and Joe Custer.

I've long thought I understood the critical (and usually overlooked) element that chemistry plays in race team's success. And yet that far-from-simple element is all it took for Stewart-Haas to succeed. According to competition director Hutchens maintained more than 70 percent of Haas CNC's work force. Even Stewart's pit crew -- which executed a decisive, race-winning final stop on Sunday -- is mostly the group that barely finished 2008 in the top 35 in owners' points tending Scott Riggs' No. 66 car.

Look at Pocono as a whole. Stewart crashed his primary car on Saturday and Grubb and his men pulled out a backup. The relatively new crew chief explained it best -- about not only the team owner having championship-sharp focus, but also his crew.

"It was great to see everybody just keep their heads about 'em, stay calm and stay cool," Grubb said. "We made all the changes we needed to and I think we actually made the second car better when we went out and started Happy Hour."

Stewart-Haas Racing

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• About Haas CNC Racing
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That's championship mettle reflective of an owner who doesn't know the meaning of "let down." And it's even more amazing that it reflects across the board at Newman's team, which at Pocono overcame an engine issue to excel.

"Thrilled," Stewart-Haas vice president Custer summed up his feelings after suffering through six fruitless seasons. "I always felt they would [succeed], the talent was clearly there. I really was proud of the whole organization, overcoming adversity and looking like a team that's been working together for years."

Back so many months ago, I admitted that Stewart-Haas Racing had many key elements in place to succeed, but that Tony wasn't a miracle worker; he couldn't possibly make it happen without taking some lumps.

I'll tell you this, Tony Stewart would never take credit for being a miracle worker, but he's earned my apology -- along with Brett and Eddie and Bobby and Matt and Darian and Tony and Gene and Joe and all those dozens of other employees -- for being damned effective team builders.

Congratulations. And the scary thing is, I might be short-selling them yet again.

"I'll be honest, I'm a little surprised that we're leading the points at this point in the season," Custer said. "I thought we would be a team that built and built and built, and by the Chase, we were capable of doing what we're executing now.

"Now it's kind of interesting, we haven't had to tune on it much. That's the thing that's exciting. We can get better. There's a lot of areas that our program can improve."

Now that might be a miracle.

Dually inconclusive

Maybe the most startling fact about the Pocono 500 was that Tony Stewart, the bloody race winner for blessed heaven's sake, only had the 21st-quickest last lap of the race as the checkers flew over his first points-paying victory as a driver/owner.

When do you have a case where 20 guys have faster last laps than the winner? You can't blame NASCAR's new double-file restart process for that, but there's not an awful lot you can give it credit for either, after its initial test-firing at Pocono.

As confusing as it was -- and trust me, after reading some of vice president for competition Robin Pemberton's explanation, I'm not completely sure either me or the TNT announcers understood it -- but I'm sorry, I didn't notice anything different about the actual race.

From a dynamics standpoint, it seemed like NASCAR and the competitors synched up perfectly, and that's a good thing, because the last thing you want is an extended caution period to figure out the running order. But trust me, that will occur some time here in the near future. Again, thank God it'll be under caution.

I have to confess, I initially thought bunching the lead lap cars at the front might create better racing. Somewhere, under some circumstances, it might. But it's the same misconception that thousands of people have, who think if you gave bonus points for wins or emphasized it any other way, that guys would race harder.

Apparently you missed the memo. They're already racing as hard as they can. Even though, if they're trying to save fuel, "as hard as they can" means racing at 80 percent.

So get over it. It was simple to see that double-file restarts will make a difference in a race sooner rather than later -- actually, David Stremme's probably thinks they made an impact too soon, after he was turned into the wall by Dale Earnhardt Jr. on a mid-race restart -- but a blanket fix it was not.

But mark this: Someone's going to figure out a way to make it pay off, sooner rather than later. Let's just wait to see when one of the lead-lap cars doesn't pit, trapping a number of laps-down cars between it and the rest of the lead lap cars.

What then?

Hooray for Lil' Bobby

It was great to see Bobby Hamilton Jr., who's been absent for much of this year's Nationwide Series, garner MacDonald Motorsports its best finish of the season for the second consecutive week when he finished 14th at his hometown Nashville event, after finishing 15th at Dover. The series needs this fiery young man racing weekly.

Busch

Kyle Busch Victory Watch

Leave it to Kyle Busch to get back in Victory Lane, at Nashville of all places, and then uncork a firestorm when he did. Given Busch's stunning 2008 NASCAR record for victories in a season, it gets him back on track to eclipsing his total of 21 wins (eight Cup, 10 Nationwide, three Truck).

With his effective follow-up to a strong Nashville spring run, it's now nine down, 13 to go. His 2008 win total at this point was 10, so with a tough two-venue triple play on tap at Michigan and Kentucky -- two strong tracks for Busch -- it'll be interesting to see what he does to light 'em up this weekend.

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The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.