CONCORD, N.C. -- All Darian Grubb has to do is mention the jacket.

It's one of the thick leather kinds emblazoned with the Daytona 500 logo, and traditionally awarded to the winners of NASCAR's season-opener at a breakfast the morning after the event. Grubb won his as crew chief for Jimmie Johnson in 2006, filling in for a suspended Chad Knaus. So when the subject of the sport's biggest race comes up, and Grubb wants to unleash a particularly cutting zinger at his boss and driver, all he has to do is ask Tony Stewart if he'd like to borrow his Daytona 500 championship jacket to wear to dinner.

“

I think even if my career ended today, we've had a pretty successful career.

”

-- TONY STEWART

"It's always a joke," Grubb said. "It's always a fun-and-games thing with that. I've won a Daytona 500, Ryan Newman has, we know we've always got one thing we can put our thumb on to give him a hard time."

That's the way it is around Stewart-Haas Racing, where it seems almost everyone has won a Daytona 500 -- everyone, that is, except for the man who runs the organization. Grubb won his four years ago. Stewart's teammate, Ryan Newman, won the race in 2008. Tony Gibson, Newman's crew chief, won it in 1999 as Jeff Gordon's car chief. Bobby Hutchens, the team's competition director, won it twice at Richard Childress Racing. Over at the Stewart-Haas shop, there is no shortage of mechanics and crewmen who were part of Daytona 500-winning teams with Dale Earnhardt Inc. during that organization's glory days.

And then there's Stewart, who's won almost every kind of race in every kind of car imaginable, who's won a trio of Daytona summertime 400-milers, who owns one championship from the Indy Racing League, two from NASCAR's Cup Series and three from the U.S. Auto Club, and yet is still looking for that first victory in his sport's most important event. Eleven times he's gone to Speedweeks, 11 times he's returned after watching someone else celebrate. From a stock-car perspective, it's the last big fish he has to reel in.

He's reminded of that fact regularly, given that he's surrounded by wise-cracking teammates, some of whom can interrupt the boss to polish their Daytona 500 rings.

"It's just a little bit of harassment in respect to Daytona," a grinning Newman said Monday during the opening session of the sport's annual preseason media tour. "I know what it feels like when you could have won it but you didn't. Whether it's your fault or somebody else's fault, it's never any good to talk about it. But knowing our relationship, I've used that privilege just a little bit to put in a little jab every once in a while, just like he does to me. What comes around goes around. You don't give out too much if you can't handle it."

The agonizing thing? That several times, Stewart has been good enough to win it. Two of his chances have been spoiled by crashes -- including that memorable end-over-end flip in 2001 -- and one by engine failure. But in his past seven starts in the Great American Race, he's only once finished worse than eighth, a stretch that includes a runner-up finish to Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2004. No question, Stewart is overdue. So much so that the image of him hoisting that 50-pound Harley J. Earl trophy seems like an inevitability to everyone, including the driver himself. (Continued)