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.

"It just hasn't worked out yet," Stewart said. "It's still the sheer fact of one in 43 is going to win it every year. We've been close. I know drivers who have been a part of this series who haven't even been close to winning a Daytona 500. So having the opportunities that we've had, in my mind it's inevitable that it will happen one day. Everything just has to work out right."

Don't confuse this with Indianapolis, the track that teased and taunted Stewart for most of his adulthood until a 2005 breakthrough in the Brickyard 400 that was more a personal catharsis than an auto racing victory. He's easily one of the better plate racers of his generation, something he's shown again and again in his ability to move from the back to the front and push others into the lead. No question, he wants to win the Daytona 500. But he also wants to win at Las Vegas and at Darlington, two places where he never has. He wants to win another championship for his two-year-old team. The Daytona 500 is one of several boxes where Stewart has yet to place a check.

"He's just as mad that he hasn't led lap 222 at Charlotte," Newman said. "That's just the way it works with a race car driver who's that determined. You want to win, and you want to lead everything you absolutely possibly can. And when you haven't won the biggest race, yeah, that's the biggest bite."

From the outside, it seems clear -- Indianapolis was personal, Daytona is business. The deep, internal longing Stewart always had to win at Indianapolis was clearly there, as obvious as the number on the side of his race car. If he feels the same way about Daytona, then he's keeping it to himself.

"I don't think it really eats at him, but it definitely is a large goal," said Grubb, whom Stewart credits with having a calming presence on a driver who can be, to put it mildly, temperamental from time to time. "If you look back to the late Dale Earnhardt and the success he had but not winning the Daytona 500, I think you saw the relief in his face. I think you'll probably see the same thing out of Tony Stewart when he does win it."

Grubb isn't the only one to make the Earnhardt comparison. Hutchens, who worked with the Intimidator for years at RCR, knows Stewart has gone to Daytona several times as the driver to beat, only to come up short for one reason or another. Earnhardt did the same thing for two decades before his emotional victory in 1998.

"We lost it about every way you could lose it, and the one year that I really didn't think we had a chance to win it, we won it," Hutchens remembered. "It's funny how that kind of happens. We won another one, were fortunate enough to, with [Kevin] Harvick. We went every year to Daytona thinking we were the car to beat back in the day, and somehow we found a way to not win that thing. We won everything down there all week, but couldn't win the 500."

Stewart, ham that he is, isn't above poking fun at himself. Monday, Newman was in the midst of answering a question about drafting with teammates when he referenced his Daytona 500 victory. "Thanks for reminding me ... again," Stewart lamented, evoking just the laugh he was looking for. It's difficult to remember such flippant remarks about Indy, which before Stewart finally won it was a subject always drenched in angst, sweat, and tears. Daytona, though, is another matter. Daytona isn't a personal quest. Daytona is a race he can joke about not winning. Which is why, one day, he likely will.

If he doesn't? Life will go on. And Grubb will continue to ask if Stewart wants to borrow his jacket.

"I think even if my career ended today, we've had a pretty successful career," Stewart said. "I think still winning the Indy 500 is higher on the list, higher than the Daytona 500 is to me. But I don't think I'll ever even have an opportunity to win Indy again. It doesn't mean, because I haven't won those two races, that if my career ended I couldn't consider it a success or a failure. We've had a pretty good career over the last 29 years."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.