Stewart’s walk-off win in the season finale, however, didn’t exactly prevail in a landslide among voting by members of the news media.

Trevor Bayne’s historic Daytona 500 victory – which opened the year on a spectacular note at Daytona International Speedway – barely missed out on the No. 1 spot. Below are the top 10 vote-getters from 2011.

1-Tony Stewart’s Homestead-Miami Clincher

Stewart trailed Carl Edwards by three points entering the 10th and final race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup™. Both drivers had predicted the championship wouldn’t be decided until the final lap, and they were right. Edwards, who started on the pole, led the most laps while Stewart yo-yoed through the field after fixing damage to the front of his Chevrolet. Amazingly, Stewart took the lead with 36 laps remaining. Edwards, in second place, stayed in full-out pursuit mode until the checkered flag waved, but finished 1.306 seconds behind Stewart. Both drivers scored 2,403 points with the tiebreaker – five wins to one – falling in Stewart’s favor.

2-Trevor Bayne’s Daytona 500 Win

Winning The Great American Race is a career achievement no matter how many races or championships are won elsewhere. Example: Seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt needed 20 starts to win his Daytona 500 at age 46. All of which made Bayne’s victory both surprising and historic. Bayne, at age 20 years and one day, was making just his second NASCAR Sprint Cup start, although his team – the legendary Wood Brothers – had won the Daytona 500 on four previous occasions. Bayne, who started 32nd and led only the final six laps as a record 74 lead changes were recorded became the youngest Daytona 500 winner and just the seventh to make the race his first NASCAR Sprint Cup victory. The win was Ford’s 600th and 98th for the Wood Brothers.

3-Brad Keselowski’s Wreckers-to-Checkers Win at Pocono

Playing hurt is the measure of athletic success, as Brad Keselowski won August’s Good Sam RV Insurance 500 at Pocono Raceway just days after breaking his left ankle in a road course testing accident. Few might have projected a healthy Keselowski as a Pocono favorite. He’d won at Kansas Speedway earlier in the summer, but came to Pennsylvania ranked 21st in points. The race turned out to be a coming-out party for the 2010 NASCAR Nationwide Series champion, who followed the performance with three more top-three finishes capped by a Bristol victory, a Chase wild card berth and a fifth place finish in final NASCAR Sprint Cup standings.

4-Jeff Gordon’s 85th NASCAR Sprint Cup Win

Four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jeff Gordon fell short in his title bid, but the 2011 season was his first with multiple victories since 2007. He broke a 66-race winless streak at Phoenix International Raceway in February, added another win at Pocono Raceway in June and scored a historic 85th career victory in a weather-delayed AdvoCare 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway in September. Atlanta’s victory gave Gordon sole possession of third among all NASCAR Sprint Cup winners, breaking a tie with NASCAR Hall of Fame member Bobby Allison and soon-to-be-inducted Darrell Waltrip.

5-Regan Smith’s Southern 500 Win

What Trevor Bayne began in February, Regan Smith continued in May. Smith entered Darlington Raceway’s SHOWTIME Southern 500 with a lean resume to say the least: no wins, top fives or top 10s in 104 NASCAR Sprint Cup starts. Smith, then 27, became the upset winner of NASCAR’s oldest “crown jewel.” He led just the final 11 laps and held off Carl Edwards by 0.196 seconds to give Furniture Row Racing – a team headquartered in Colorado – its first series victory.

6-Jimmie Johnson’s Aaron’s 499 Win at Talladega

At the time, Jimmie Johnson’s final-lap victory – with an assist by teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. – appeared to be an early harbinger of a sixth consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. Johnson’s second Talladega Superspeedway win – and 54th overall – boosted him from fourth to second in the point standings. The race matched records for lead changes (88) and margin of victory under electronic scoring (0.002 seconds).

7-Paul Menard Holds Off Jeff Gordon to Win Brickyard 400

Surprise winners in 2011, take three. For much of its 19 years, Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Brickyard 400 had been won by the greatest names in NASCAR: Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Jarrett, Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt, bill Elliott – champions all. No first-time winners in the bunch – until this July. Midwesterner Paul Menard wound up kissing the start-finish line bricks after prevailing in a torrid battle with four-time Brickyard 400 winner Jeff Gordon. Menard joined Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne and SHOWTIME Southern 500 winner Regan Smith to score a first victory on the schedule’s largest stages.

8-Austin Dillon Becomes Youngest NASCAR Camping World Truck Champion

Though a number of young drivers have used their experience in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series as a springboard to NASCAR Sprint Cup success – think Carl Edwards, among others – veteran drivers, for the most part, have had a stranglehold on its championships. Only Travis Kvapil (age 27 in 2003) was younger than 30 in the series’ first 16 seasons. All that changed in 2011 as third-generation driver Austin Dillon, 21, became the youngest to win an NCWTS title. Dillon, a two-time winner, finished six points ahead of NASCAR national series veteran Johnny Sauter. Dillon, Richard Childress’ grandson, returned a title to RCR that Mike Skinner won in the series’ 1995 inaugural season.

9-Danica Patrick Posts Best Finish in NASCAR by a Female Driver

All agreed that Danica Patrick’s part-time NASCAR career was on the upswing in its second season. Patrick proved that with an exclamation point on March 5 with a solid, fourth-place finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The performance was record-setting: Patrick became not only the highest-finishing female driver in a NASCAR Nationwide Series race but also in any NASCAR national series event. Patrick’s feat broke a record from NASCAR’s earliest years – Sara Christian’s fifth-place finish in a NASCAR Sprint Cup (then Strictly Stock) race on Oct. 2, 1949 at Heidelberg, Pa.

10-2010 Sunoco Rookies-of-the-Year Win Championship

Two NASCAR national series champions gave media and fans yet another reason to keep an eye on the newcomers. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., whose uneven performance nearly cost him his job with Roush Fenway Racing in 2010, recovered to claim NASCAR Nationwide Series Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors. Roush’s faith was rewarded as Stenhouse won twice en route to the 2011 championship. Austin Dillon’s rookie of the year run in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series wasn’t quite so dramatic but like Stenhouse, he “graduated” to the champion’s chair. The season marked the first time that both Nationwide and truck rookies became champions in their sophomore years.

CAN YOU ADDRESS THE DANICA SITUATION?
“It’s like I’ve always said when we have something to tell everybody we’ll tell them but there’s nothing to tell yet. I know there’s a lot of speculation but there is nothing to really talk about yet.”

I’VE HEARD FROM MANY SOURCES.
“I don’t care about your sources. When we have something to talk about we’ll talk about it. I promise we won’t leave any of you guys out I promise.”

DO YOU THINK IT WILL BE SOON?
“What will be soon? I don’t know. I don’t know. If we knew that we’d already be talking about it wouldn’t we. When we have something to talk about I promise you I will not let any of you be late for the deal.”

YOU’RE STILL OBVIOUSLY LOOKING TO ADD A THIRD TEAM.
“We’ve said that from day one. We’ve never wavered from that, never said anything different from that. We’re definitely to a third team and want to be a four-car team eventually.”

LAST WEEK YOU WERE RUNNING SOMEWHERE IN THE TOP-10 WHEN THE ISSUE WENT DOWN LATE IN THE RACE, HOW MUCH DOES THAT HURT GIVEN WHERE YOU STAND?
“It’s a pretty big blow but its self-inflicted and I put myself in a bad position around a couple of guys that I know in that scenario are not going to be worried about anything but themselves. So it was my fault. I put myself in a bad spot. It’s my job the next four weeks to help get myself out of it.”

HOW COMPETITIVE DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU GUYS WILL BE OVER THE NEXT MONTH?
“I hope good. I mean we’ve had potential we just are losing some consistency again. There’s days we’ve got a great race car and there’s days we’re off a little bit. So we’ve got to figure out how to be more consistent first then worry about getting better.”

HOW WAS YOUR PRACTICE OUT HERE TODAY?
“I think we’re okay. I don’t think we’re setting the world on fire. We’re definitely not the fastest car. We’re not the fastest car in qualifying trip either but it feels like it’s got better balance than when we were here in the spring. Hopefully we’re not going to fight the same issues we had in the first race here this year.”

HOW DO YOU DEFINE SUCCESS FOR A NEW DRIVER IN NASCAR?
“I think the hardest thing is it’s more what you put on yourself not what somebody else tells you is success. Just getting here is a hard enough step so learning the ins and outs of it. Learning how to do things right and just your progress each week. I think what you feel like you’ve taken away from each race at the end of the day no matter what the result is determines the success that your having but it’s not always measured by what you see in the finishing standings or the qualifying standings or where you’re at on the race track during the race. I think a lot of it is just the knowledge that you’re gaining. If you feel like you’re making progress then you are even though the result may not show it.”

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE SUCCESSFUL AT BRISTOL AT NIGHT?
“The same thing as the day. I just love the night race there. To me it’s one of the coolest races of the year but you can’t have anything go wrong. You have to have a perfect race car if something goes wrong to be able to have a shot to get back. If you don’t have a perfect race car it’s a lot of times impossible to get caught back up. So you’ve got to have a problem-free day but you’re going to have to have a good race car. There’s a bunch of guys that are really good there now and you can’t be a little bit off and have a good day, you’ve got to be on your game.”

IS THERE SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT JUST RUNNING UNDER THE LIGHTS THERE?
“It’s the atmosphere. When the cars hit the ground you can see the sparks there. Bristol has always had that cool atmosphere because of how short it is and the way the grandstands there are and then you do it at night on top of that, it’s just got a cool feel to it.”

EVERY TIME WE GO BACK THERE IT SEEMS THE RECONFIGURATION, EVERYBODY WANTS TO KNOW IS THE OLD WAY BETTER, JUNIOR SAID HE THINKS THE TRACK IS AS GOOD AS IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN BUT THE COT CHANGED THE RACING THERE, WHAT DO YOU THINK?
“The track for sure from day one has been better. You didn’t have to just run behind guys and wreck guys to pass them. You could use the whole race track now. As a driver, especially on a track that size, that’s what you look for. That’s all you can ask for is to have a place that you can move around. I don’t know that the COT has really changed it any different. He’s probably got a valid point. I guess I just don’t think about it. The big thing is just making sure you’ve got a car that you can move around the race track and if you can do that you’re probably setting yourself up for a good opportunity to have a good day because you’ve got to be able to move and switch lanes and run different grooves instead of just running around the bottom all day.”

Silly Season is in full swing: http://t.co/WggaalY Reports… Sources… it’s all speculation until you hear it from Tony Stewart.

by Sporting News

Danica Patrick will race full time for JR Motorsports in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series next year, according to multiple Internet reports.

An announcement is expected next week in Phoenix, where Patrick’s sponsor, GoDaddy.com, is based. The initial announcement of Patrick’s foray into NASCAR racing took place in December 2009 in the Rotunda at Chase Field in Phoenix.

According to a report by ESPN’s Marty Smith, Patrick, 29, also will run selected Sprint Cup events in cars prepared by Stewart-Haas Racing, with plans to run a full Cup schedule in 2013. Contractual details are still being finalized, according to the report.

Team owner Tony Stewart hasn’t confirmed or denied whether he’s negotiating with Patrick on a possible Cup ride.

“Can’t say anything,” Stewart said Aug. 5 at Pocono. At a “Smoke Show” charity appearance Tuesday at Texas Motor Speedway, Stewart told reporters, “I don’t have an IndyCar team, I don’t have a Nationwide team,” when he was asked whether he was interested in hiring Patrick.

Stewart, of course, does have a Cup team.

After debuting with a 13-race Nationwide schedule in 2010, Patrick has run six events in the series so far this year, with her top finish a fourth at Las Vegas—the best result ever for a female driver in any of NASCAR’s top three national touring series.

Patrick currently competes full-time in the IndyCar Series. She is 12th in the series standings through 13 events this year.

Danica Patrick is finalizing a deal to run a full Nationwide Series schedule for JR Motorsports and a partial Cup schedule with Stewart-Haas Racing next season, according to The Associated Press.

JR Motorsports spokesman Mike Davis and Patrick agent Mark Dyer declined to comment on the report when contacted by SceneDaily.com.

It has been widely speculated that if Patrick moved from IndyCar to NASCAR full time, she would run the full Nationwide schedule for JRM, where she has run partial schedules the past two years with sponsorship from GoDaddy.com.

She also is expected to compete in select Sprint Cup races with Tony Stewart’s Stewart-Haas Racing, according to AP.

Stewart-Haas co-owner Tony Stewart said in May he hadn’t talked to Patrick about next year but was interested in having her join his organization.

Patrick, 29, whose fourth-place finish at Las Vegas was the highest of any female in a national NASCAR touring series race, has one IndyCar victory but likely will leave open-wheel racing behind after 2011.

“I’m racing (part time) in NASCAR, and I’ve not made anyone wonder whether or not I like it,” Patrick said at Daytona last month. “Other than that, these things, as I’ve said from the beginning of the year, are complicated and they take time.

“Whether I’m coming here or not has yet to be signed, sealed and delivered. And I might not be. Only time will tell.”

Patrick is 11th in the IndyCar standings driving for team owner Michael Andretti.

ARE YOU GOING TO BE AT SPEED STREET TOMORROW NIGHT?
“Yes.”

WHAT’S PLAYING? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO BE DOING?
“I have no idea. I’ll know when I get there.”

HAVE YOU BEEN A PART OF THAT IN THE PAST? WHAT SORT OF EXPERIENCE HAS IT BEEN?
“Yeah, but you’ve got to remember I’m more worried about trying to figure out what I’m doing in my race car right now. I’m worried about my race car. I’m not worried about all this other stuff. This is ‘Hell Week’ being in Charlotte. We don’t do anything but work all week for two and a half weeks. So, it’s non-stop. We’re just happy when we can be at the track and can finally get a break.”

MATT KENSETH SAID 600 MILES IS REALLY LONG WHEN YOU’RE CAR IS NOT DOING WHAT YOU WANT IT TO
“500 miles is a long time when you’re car’s not right. I’m not sure that we’re practicing in the heat of the day here for qualifying tonight; so that’s why we’ve got Saturday to work on the race stuff.”

WITH THIS HEAT, IS THERE ANYTHING THAT YOU CAN USE FROM LAST WEEK THAT YOU’RE GOING TO BRING OVER?
“Look in your archives. Every year everybody tells you ‘Yes’ on that. That’s what everybody says. That’s what everybody said last week. It’s the same answer this week. Log this answer for the rest of my life that yes, everything that we learned last week we will use toward this week for the rest of my life. That’s what we’ll do.”

“That’s a given. Everybody is going to do that. Everybody is going to look off their notes last week because we’re running the same track two weeks in a row. And they’re both ending at night. So it’s as consistent as you can get. I know you have to ask but I have to answer it that way because I get tired of answering the same thing every May the same question.”

HOW IS KANSAS DIFFERENT FROM THIS TRACK IN YOUR APPROACH?
“It’s shaped different (laughs); it’s a whole different race track. Even the tracks that are shaped the same as Charlotte race differently. I mean Atlanta races different, Texas races different; and Kansas is totally shaped different than here. So it’s a whole different place.”

I KNOW IT’S SHAPED DIFFERENT, BUT HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FOR YOU? WHAT DO YOU DO DIFFERENTLY?
“The handling characteristics are different. Man, I don’t even know what kind of answer you want for that because it’s kind of far out there. I don’t even know when Kansas is compared to now.”

IT’S NEXT WEEK
“Okay, I don’t even know. Like I say, we’re worried about this week and not what we’re doing next week at Kansas or the week after that wherever we’re at then. We’ve got 600 miles we’re trying to work on this week.”

HOW IS YOUR CAR?
“I think it’s pretty good. I’m pretty happy with the balance so far in race trim. It’s just staying focused on what we’re doing. There have been so many distractions in the last week and a half, and everybody wants to talk about Kansas or something else that doesn’t pertain to anything that we’re doing right now, that it’s hard to focus on it.”

WITH YOUR OWNER’S HAT ON, CAN I ASK YOU ABOUT DANICA PATRICK?
“You can’t ask me anything about Danica. It doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m doing here today. If you have something to ask me about what we’re doing here today, feel free. And I’ll stay here as long as you want. Do you have anything else?

I’M GOOD.
“Okay.”

Here’s the video of the media visit.

WHAT WAS YOUR OVERALL IMPRESSIONS OF YOUR TEAM AT DAYTONA?
“We were terrible and I wish I could put a finger on why we were so bad, but we were. We just never got the balance. We were that way from the time we unloaded in Shootout practice the first week through the 500. We fought the same thing and never could come up with a solution to fix the problem. I don’t know what we missed there, but we’re going to keep digging into it until we figure it out.”

IS THERE A CONCERN THAT YOU WILL BE FIGHTING THE SAME PROBLEM MOVING FORWARD?:
“If it happened this week then we would worry about it a little bit more going into Vegas than we would going from Daytona to California because of the packages being different. I’m concerned about how we’re going to be when we go back to Daytona in July right now.”

WHAT IS YOUR OUTLOOK FOR NEXT WEEKEND AT LAS VEGAS?:
“It’s no different at Las Vegas than anywhere else, you have to get it to rotate the corner, but still stay tight enough on entry and exit. There’s no unique challenges there, it’s a cookie-cutter mile-and-a-half so it’s the same thing that we fight 18 races a year. Nice thing is that the place is really smooth and that really lets you work on the attitude of your car and I think that’s a luxury that we have there that we don’t necessarily always get everywhere because every track has its unique set of bumps. Vegas has their’s too, but for the most part it’s so smooth that you can really fine-tune the attitude of the car.”

DO YOU DRIVE AS AN OWNER OR DRIVER AND HOW HAS IT CHANGED SINCE YOU BECAME THE TEAM OWNER?
“It hasn’t from the driving side. I think I’ve been on the ownership side long enough not only with the Cup stuff, but with my open wheel teams that I’ve run periodically here and there. When you get in them you are just thinking about being a driver, you’re not thinking about making payroll at the end of the week or all the other things that you worry about when you’re outside the car. When you’re in the car, if you’re thinking about anything other than driving the car then you probably shouldn’t be in there to begin with. I think that’s something that’s been really easy to separate the two for us.”

HOW DO YOU THINK TWITTER COULD HELP YOU?
“I have no idea because I don’t do anything with that stuff. I actually have enough productive stuff to do with my life other than sit there and tell everybody what I’m doing every minute of every day. I really don’t mess with it. I’ve heard about it, I’ve heard a lot about it, but don’t know anything about it.”

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON HAVING TWO RACES AT AUTO CLUB SPEEDWAY EVERY YEAR?
“If it’s not here, it will be somewhere else. It doesn’t matter to us as competitors. We just want to race and we really don’t care where it’s at.”

The 2-mile oval situated an hour east of Los Angeles is home to round two on the 36-race Sprint Cup schedule, and it’s where teams will face their first true measurement.

Restrictor-plate prowess and drafting partners are of no help at California. California is about what a team and its driver does to go faster than 42 other team/driver combinations. What other teams do or don’t do have no bearing on how a particular team will perform in front of NASCAR’s No. 1 media market.

Horsepower and putting that power to the pavement through the track’s 14-degree banked corners are of paramount importance – not just at California, but for the rest of the season. Intermediate tracks like California make up the majority of the 22 venues featured on the Sprint Cup schedule. How one performs at California is indicative of how one will perform at similarly styled tracks – beginning with Las Vegas Motor Speedway the very next weekend.

Tony Stewart comes into California 23rd in the championship standings, but the driver of the No. 14 Old Spice/Office Depot Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing can take solace in the fact that he’s ahead of four-time and reigning Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson (35th) and is joined by seven other drivers who made the Chase for the Championship last year but are currently outside the top-15.

The Sprint Cup schedule is a marathon and not a sprint, and Stewart, already a two-time champion (2002 and 2005), knows this as well as anyone. So with the Auto Club 500 next up for Stewart, he views it as a stepping-stone to a club he expects to join 25 races from now – the club of 12 Chase drivers competing for the Sprint Cup championship.

Tony, after spending so much time in Daytona for Speedweeks, how much of a relief is it to get back to a normal three-day race weekend?

“I think everybody’s pretty worn out after being in Daytona for so long. California means a normal routine and a chance for the crew guys to get back to their families for a couple of days before heading to another racetrack.”

Is too much emphasis placed on Daytona in terms of how teams are going to perform for the rest of the season?

“I think so. Daytona is a restrictor-plate race and, unlike Daytona, four guys can’t get in a line at California and go to the front. Daytona and Talladega (Ala.) have always just been two different forms of racing. With the draft being so important at those two tracks, it’s more of a team deal than an individual deal. What happens at California and the races after that has to be done on your own. You can’t help each other at California. You just have to go race.”

A lot of importance is placed on the California race, and it seems an equal amount of importance is placed on the next race at Las Vegas. Why?

“These early races teach you very quickly where your program is, compared to the competition. If your cars are good, you’ll run well at California, Vegas, Atlanta, Texas and so on. Everybody wants to know where they stack up and shake out right now. If you can get off to a good start, it shows that your program is really where it needs to be. This is a huge week.”

When you came to California last February, it was only your second race working with Darian Grubb after 10 years with Greg Zipadelli at Joe Gibbs Racing. Are you as comfortable with Grubb, now, as you were, then, with Zipadelli?

“Honestly, when we started this thing last year, there were times when I was sitting in the car and I told him what my balance was, and he told me what we were going to change, and I was like, ‘Wow, is that the right way to go?’ I told him that, too. It’s just learning each other. It’s learning a new package. It was a big learning curve for me to learn a new chassis. Darian obviously knows what these cars like and what this chassis package likes. It’s just a matter of tailoring it to what I like, feel-wise, in the car. There were times the first couple of races where I didn’t necessarily understand why we were doing something, but when you go out there and it responds positively to those changes, you gain that confidence right away. I have the same confidence in Darian that I had in Zippy for 10 years. It doesn’t take long, and the great thing is I’ve been really blessed and lucky over the last 12 years to have two really good crew chiefs who I can talk to about anything and that I’ve connected with.”

Even though you had a very good season last year, especially for a start-up team, when you look at what Jimmie Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus and the No. 48 team have accomplished with four straight Sprint Cup championships, does that provide extra motivation for you and everyone at Stewart-Haas Racing?

“They’re the benchmark. They’re the team everybody is looking at. We want to do as good of a job as those guys are doing. That is our benchmark. That’s what we’re looking at and where we want to be as soon as we can get there. When you’ve had a team that’s done it right for that many consecutive years, you know they’ve got it figured out and that it’s where you need to be. Now, it’s just a matter of figuring out what they’re doing.

“They’re the team that’s outperforming everybody. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. That’s what this sport is all about. It’s about performance and who does the best job. They’ve done the best job for the last four years. They should be the champions. Is it bad for our sport? Absolutely not. Every year, somebody’s going to outperform somebody else. It doesn’t have to be a different guy every year. If they do it a fifth time this year, it’s kind of cool, at least from my perspective. I’ve been able to watch Penske dominate in Indy cars and Junior Johnson and Bill Elliott dominate here in NASCAR. Everybody has had his period. Every form of racing has had somebody who’s had a dynasty and had that period where they’ve been the guy to beat. We’re in that period with Jimmie Johnson. And it’s not a period that frustrates you. It just makes you want to work that much harder. You want to be that next team that does what he’s doing right now.”

Danica Patrick will make her second career NASCAR Nationwide Series start this weekend at California. What should we expect?

“Everybody should expect to let her learn. There is a lot of focus on her, and pressure. She’s done a great job of dealing with that. Everybody’s got to remember she’s a rookie. Anything that she does is not like she didn’t meet a goal or she exceeded a goal. This week is another learning experience. If everybody treats it that way, then everything will be fine.”

You are one of the few drivers who have been successful in Indy car and stock cars. What are some of the challenges Patrick faces in transitioning from Indy cars to stock cars?

“She’s got a heavier racecar now that will move around a lot more. That’s the biggest thing. It’s just learning a different racecar and the feel that comes with it. The good thing is that she is focused and determined and is logging a lot of miles right now, and that’s what you have to do. With all the laps she ran at Daytona in ARCA and the Nationwide Series, she left there with a lot of knowledge about these cars. Obviously, what we had at Daytona isn’t what we’ll have at California or Vegas, but it’s still seat time, and that’s what’s important.”

GIVE US YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT SUNDAY’S 52ND RUNNING OF THE DAYTONA 500.
“Obviously it is our biggest race of the year so we are excited about that coming up. I was looking forward to having the practice today. Unfortunately, I don’t think that is happening. No driver is happy with their car. Everybody still wants to work at it. I was looking forward to the practice time today. I am definitely utilize a lot of the time tomorrow to finish some of the direction we ended up yesterday in the qualifying race. If we can have a half-way decent day like we had yesterday, I think we are going to be ok.”

WHAT STYLE OF RACE ARE YOU EXPECTING SUNDAY?
“Pretty much the same style we saw yesterday (Gatorade Duel at Daytona). I mean, I don’t know what to expect other than what we just did. That is kind of what we are going to have, just going to have a bigger pack of cars. The cool thing is handling is going to be key. Guys that can get their car balanced, unless you get a caution every 10 or 15 laps, everybody’s cars are going to be moving around. I am hoping to see a lot of long runs because, the first half of the qualifier yesterday, we were barely hanging on to the lead draft. We made some adjustments and it got us up to the front at the end of the race. It is going to make that handling really crucial and where you are going to be able to keep your car and where you are going to be able to stay track position wise. I think that is what is going to make it exciting for us as drivers. We are finally in a situation where we have to drive these cars and you aren’t just 100% having to rely on who is around you and behind you.”

WHY IS THE DAYTONA 500 SO DIFFICULT TO WIN FOR SOME DRIVERS AND THEN SOME OTHERS HAVE WON IT BUT NEVER BEEN HEARD FROM AGAIN?
“It is just unpredictable, that is the hard part. Especially with the restrictor plate stuff, that has always thrown an added element to it that can bring guys to the front that may not always be able to get there in a typical race weekend. That is what makes it so hard to win here because instead of a handful of guys with the opportunity to win each week, you have half the field that if things go their way and they get in the right positions and do the right things during the race can get themselves in a position to win. It is just unpredictable from that standpoint and that is what makes it to where you never can, you can say somebody is the favorite, but there are so many variables that are different here than at a typical race weekend, that make that a different equation.”

IS THE DAYTONA 500 ON THE TOP OF YOUR LIST OF MOST AGGRAVATIONS OF NOT HAVING WON AFTER ALL OF YOUR OTHER ACCOMPLISHMENTS?
“Well, Indy (Indianapolis 500) is the one that frustrates me the most that I haven’t got. The good thing is, I still have opportunities here. I’m not going to have anymore Indy 500 opportunities, that side of it is past so that is why that is frustrating. This at times has been frustration because we have been so close so many times. It is like I told somebody earlier, that is what, if we ever do win it, that what’s going to make it so gratifying is because we have worked so hard. We have been so close so many times; to finally accomplish that goal will make it even more special.”

ARE YOU STILL WILLING TO WIN IT UPSIDE DOWN ON FIRE?
“Absolutely! I can get out in victory lane and my legs can be on fire and I am fine with it. I don’t care, just give me the trophy. I realize there will be like 20 of you guys with five-gallon jugs of gasoline and torches to do that, but I am fine with that still.”

HOW ARE THE BUMPS IN THREE AND FOUR UNDER RACE CONDITIONS?
“I don’t feel like they are any different than they have been. That is the great thing. I would hate to see them re-pave this track right now and make it like Talladega because right now, the drivers are actually a huge part of the equation. Knowing what to do when you get to those bumps and knowing what your car is going to do and how it is going to react, that is making us have to use the whole race track. It is making us have to really work on the handling of our cars. That is the part that has probably excited me the most since I have been here. Nobody’s car has seemed to be perfect and it is making everybody have to really work on the balance versus just trying to get raw speed out of it.”

ROBIN PEMBERTON ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THE SAFETY RECORD OF THE CAR IS THE REASON THEY ARE ABLE TO RELAX THE RULES AND LET YOU HAVE IT ON THE TRACK A LITTLE BIT. DALE JARRETT COMMENTS THAT MAYBE THE FANS HAVE TURNED OFF A LITTLE BIT BECAUSE NASCAR IS TOO SAFE. DO YOU FEEL LIKE IT IS TOO SAFE OUT THERE, THAT FANS MAYBE LIKE THE DANGER A LITTLE BIT?
“Well, I could say that the media center is getting boring in here and it is too safe because you guys have four legs on your chairs. So, we could start sawing legs off. I don’t think fans that watch NASCAR want to watch their drivers get hurt. So…no.”

AFTER THE SHOOTOUT AND DUELS, DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU WANT TO HOOK UP TO IN THE 500 AND WILL YOU GO TO THAT GUY OR GUYS BEFORE THE RACE AND SAY ‘HEY MAN, MY CAR WORKS REALLY WELL WITH YOURS, LET’S STICK TOGETHER’ OR WILL IT BE A MORE IMPROMPTU THING DURING THE RACE?
“Definitely going to be more impromptu. I’m not sure, I feel like this year more than ever, where at Talladega where it used to be always Dale, Jr. and I would always get together, I don’t think it is really is a scenario where you can even plan that you are even going to get in to those scenarios. Right now, I am just trying to get my car driving good enough by myself, let alone worrying about who I am going to be around. My focus, until we get to Sunday at least, is going to be trying to work on the balance of my car and getting it to drive to where the longer we get in to a run, I can stay wide open. That is my focus right now is making it have a good enough balance to where I don’t have to sit there and crack the throttle, because anytime you are doing that, it is a big momentum-killer here.”

WILL WE SEE CARS FROM SAME MANUFACTURER LINING UP TOGETHER?
“All the cars are the same; it is just different decals on the nose so it really does throw that out of the equation. Like you say, when we ran Pontiacs back in the day and the spoilers on the Pontiac was shaped like the deck lid. It did. They all had different profiles on how the air came off those cars. That was a lot bigger factor in the equation, but it really is out the window now.”

DO YOU THINK THERE WILL ACTUALLY BE A LITTLE MORE LATITUDE IN THE END FOR DRIVERS TO SHOW MORE OF THEMSELVES NOW AS NASCAR SAID AND DO YOU WONDER WHY IT WASN’T DONE SIX YEARS AGO?
“Well, we aren’t going to be able to chance what happened six years ago anyway, so who cares. The good thing is, we have got it now. You guys have got to remember that this sport is so different from all the other professional sports. The balancing act that we have with corporate America versus our sport and the entertainment side of our sport is what makes NASCAR unique. We’ve got major corporations that we are representing where guys get in a fight at a basketball game, it is no big deal because nobody cares because it is just that team doing it and they don’t have a corporate sponsor to be accountable to at the end of the day. I think NASCAR has always been good in the direction of how to grow the sport. NASCAR has always been really good at listening to what people are saying too and knowing what the fans are wanting and giving us that ability to kind of police ourselves again to a certain degree. Am I buying it? Absolutely. The one thing I believe about NASCAR, if they tell you something, they have thought about and they have thought through it pretty well before they tell you that is what they are going to do. I at least have the faith in NASCAR that when they tell us something, that is what is going to happen out of it.”

WHAT ARE YOU DOING DIFFERENTLY OR NEW TO ADD VALUE TO YOUR EXISTING SPONSORS AND HOW DO YOU INTEGRATE THOSE SPONSORS IN TO YOUR DAILY LIFE? HOW MANY WHOPPERS DO YOU EAT DURING A GIVEN WEEK?
“My share, I can promise you that. It makes it a lot easier when they gave me that gold card and I can just go up there, I don’t have to have cash in my pocket. Trust me, I exercise my right to use my King Card when I get to the drive-thru window. Every week is different. There are weeks that I am home. There are weeks that I am on my property and I never leave my property for two or three days at a time. Then there are times when you are at Daytona Beach, Florida and at the end of the day, I will be the only one in the bus and I don’t cook. So, there is a Burger King right outside the tunnel. You make a right and you make a left and you are there. But as far as adding value, you just try, the thing we have always done since day one since we had our first World of Outlaws team back in ’01 to present day, is we have always tried to under-promise and over-deliver. I don’t know how you do more than that. You try to make everything as efficient for your sponsors as you can. You try to find ways for the sponsors to work together to add value to it and make it more efficient to where if one person is doing something, the other sponsors can kind of piggy back it and then they return the favor on the other side. You try to think of every way you can to just try to make it efficient and make them feel like they are getting the most bang for their buck.”

ARE YOU DOING MORE APPEARANCES OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT?
“Not unless they start adding more hours to the day and days to the week. There is only so much time you have available to do what you have to do. You pretty much allot all of that at the beginning of the year anyway. If they will give us another 100 days in the year, we can do more appearance obviously. But you are kind of stuck with what you have got right now.”

YOU HAD A REALLY SUCCESSFUL FIRST YEAR AS A TEAM OWNER, BUT HAVE YOU LOOKED AT WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN YOUR WEAKEST LINK AND WHAT YOU HAVE TO ADDRESS AND IMPROVE UPON SO YOU ARE RIGHT THERE THIS SEASON TO BE THERE WITH JIMMIE (JOHNSON) AND THE OTHER CHASE CONTENDERS?
“If we all knew that variable, we would all be Jimmie. I think we just found a couple of things that we missed on and it wasn’t until the end of the year and after the season was over that we found mistakes that we made and kind of got off track a little bit and didn’t realize that was what had happened. Obviously if we had known, we wouldn’t have let it happen. We did find a couple of variables that we felt like we slipped on a little bit and that may, those two variables, might have been things that kept us from having that shot. We will address those and try to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

DANICA (PATRICK) SEEMED PRETTY LOOSE AND RELAXED ON YOUR RADIO SHOW LAST NIGHT, DID THE CROWD THERE REACT WELL TO HAVING HER THERE?
“Absolutely. We had (Mike) Helton there then when Danica came out, we couldn’t see the computer to look at what the producers were telling us because we do it all off of the computer screen, we couldn’t even see it because of the flash bulbs. It was pretty cool. The fans were very receptive and were excited about it. I told her, this is a show where we aren’t doing an interview, we are just going to sit down and talk and have fun. I think she knew we weren’t going to do anything that was going to throw her a curve ball or back her in a corner and we had fun with and I think she did too.”

WHAT YOU SEEN A LOT OF DIFFERENCE WITH THE BUMP DRAFTING AND HOW IS IT WORKING OUT?
“I don’t think it is as big of a factor here because you can’t push guys through the corner like you can at Talladega. At Talladega, you can literally get to the guy’s bumper and you can comfortably push him around the race track until the guy who is doing the pushing water temperature goes through the roof and he has to get off of that person. You can’t do that here at Daytona. If you try to do that, you are going to do that, you are going to wreck the guy in front of you. You are going to wreck yourself and wad up half of the field. You can do the pushing down the straightaway and that is not such a bad deal. It is frustrating for us when you get a run on somebody and then you are stuck and you just have to stop and you can’t do anything with it. So it is nice to be able to push that guy in front of you and help carry that momentum a little bit. But I haven’t seen that get out of control. There is nothing that sends up a warning flag that ways hey, we have to re-look at this. I think it has been pretty tame.”

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES DANICA PATRICK WILL FACE IN THE TRANSITION TO STOCK CAR RACING?
“She’s got a heavier race car now that will move around a lot more. That’s the biggest thing. It’s just learning a different race car and the feel of it. The good thing is that she is focused and determined and is logging a lot of miles right now and that’s what you have to do. If she can run the whole Nationwide race here tomorrow and not have a problem, she’s going to have so much knowledge when she leaves here about these cars. Obviously what we have here isn’t what we’ll have at California or Vegas. But at least with the restrictor plate package she’ll have a lot of knowledge between the ARCA car and the Nationwide car if she can run all the laps tomorrow.

REALISTICALLY, WHAT CAN PEOPLE EXPECT TO SEE?
“Everybody should expect to let her learn. There is a lot of focus on her and pressure. She’s done a great job of dealing with that. Everybody’s got to remember she’s a rookie. Anything that she does is not like she didn’t meet a goal or she exceeded a goal. This is a learning experience this week. If everybody treats it that way, then everything will be fine.”

WHERE DO YOU WANT TO BE ON THE LAST LAP OF THE DAYTONA 500, THE HIGH SIDE OR THE LOW SIDE?
“It’s just like what Jimmie Johnson mentioned yesterday and Brian Vickers mentioned it too. It seems like if you get your car balanced on the bottom, then if you go to the high side, you’re really loose. It’s a matter of where your car is driving good and where the guys that have speed are lined up. If they’re lined up on the bottom, it’s going to carry more momentum down there. If you’ve got guys that are kind of line-committed to the top but they’ve got speed, that’s going to push that line forward. I don’t know that you can say exactly where. When we were leading the race, Kasey was moving around up and down and we kind of just ran the middle because I knew my car at that point drove well enough that I could move down if I needed to or move up if I needed to. The middle is normally a no-zone for us. We don’t like to run there too much but it seemed to work yesterday. A lot of it is going to be balance of where you’re race car is running good.”

LOOKING AT THE SEASON AND WHAT THE NO. 48 HAS ACCOMPLISHED, TO WHAT EXTENT DOES THAT MOTIVATE YOU & YOUR TEAM?
“That’s the benchmark. That’s what everybody is looking at. You hear a lot about saying they’ve got a bullseye; it’s not that as much as everybody is saying that’s where they want to be. We want to do as good a job as those guys are doing. That is our benchmark. That’s what we’re looking at and where we want to be as soon as we can get there. I hate to say five or ten years from now. It could happen next year; we don’t know, or this year, we don’t know. But that’s definitely the goal. When you’ve had a team that’s done it right for that many consecutive years, you say they’ve got it figured out and this is where we need to be. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out what they are doing and how do we do that.

“They are the team that’s outperforming everybody. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. That’s what this sport is all about. It’s about performance and who does the best job. They’ve done the best job for the last four years. They should be the champions. Is it bad for our sport? Absolutely not. Every year somebody’s going to outperform somebody else. It doesn’t have to be a different guy every year. If they do it a fifth time this year; it’s kind of cool at least from my perspective and I’ve been able to watch Penske dominate and Junior Johnson dominate and Bill Elliott dominate. Everybody has had their periods. Every form of racing has had somebody that’s had a dynasty and had that period where they’ve been the guys to beat. We’re in that period with Jimmie Johnson. And it’s not a period that frustrates you. It just makes you want to work that much harder to be him. You want to be that next group that does what he’s doing right now.”

WHAT DOES THE EXTRA HORSEPOWER FROM THE LARGER PLATE DO FOR YOU THIS YEAR?
“I’ll be honest; I haven’t noticed much from it. That’s part of why we feel like we need that practice today and tomorrow is that we feel like we’re missing something. I’m not really seeing that like I’ve seen in some other cars. I’ve seen cars that are able to get out of the gas and be able to get that recovery back pretty quick. I’m not seeing that with my car and that’s what we’re trying to work on and figure out how we can get that. It just seems like you don’t necessarily get stuck quite as easy. It used to be if you got yourself in a bind or bogged down, it took a long time to get back up. And guys are being able to recover a lot quicker and I think takes some of the frustration out of it for us as drivers.”

GIVEN WITH WHAT HAPPENED WITH BOBBY HUTCHENS OVER THE OFF-SEASON, WHAT WOULD THAT DAYTONA 500 TROPHY MEAN TO YOU?
“It’s a great feeling. Not only is Bobby feeling a loss, but our whole organization does and I think a lot of that is because we’re really preached from day 1 when we joined Gene Haas’s operation that family comes first with our group and during Sharon’s term with the cancer there were a lot of days that Bobby wasn’t at the shop and there were some trips late in the year that were further away from Charlotte that we didn’t let Bobby go to because we didn’t want him to be too far away from home if something were to go wrong. To celebrate in Victory Lane here at Daytona would be special and it would mean even that much more to Bobby, having the tragedy and the loss that he’s had. He lost his wife. He lost his best friend. And to be able to have an accomplishment like that this Sunday would be something that would be a really big pick-me-up.”

HOW MUCH TIME AND MONEY IS YOUR ORGANIZATION PUTTING INTO RESEARCH ON HOW THIS NEW SPOILER IS GOING TO WORK VERSUS TRYING TO ADVANCE WHAT YOU’VE GOT WITH THE WING RIGHT NOW?
“I would say realistically there won’t be much work going into the next five races. I don’t know for sure. You’d have to ask (crew chief) Darian (Grubb) to know this 100 percent. But I would pretty much say that easily 90 to 95% of the focus right now is going to be on that spoiler and what we have to do. You don’t want to get behind, that’s the thing. You don’t want to start into the spoiler portion of it behind everybody else. So everybody is going to be focused on that. Everybody kind of knows where everything the wing stuff is going and so we’ll focus more on the spoiler side than we will the wing.”

The live broadcast will air on Sirius, available to listeners nationwide on Channel 128 and XM Channel 128 with the “Best of Sirius” programming package.

Fans are welcome to attend the broadcast and will be admitted free of charge. Space is limited. Tickets will be made available on a first-come, first-served basis on Thursday at Guest Services at the Daytona 500 Experience.

Stewart and co-host Matt Yocum will preview the 2010 Daytona 500. They will be joined by special guests and will take questions from the live studio audience.

Scheduled guests on Thursday’s program include driver Danica Patrick, who will make her much-anticipated NASCAR debut in the Nationwide Series race on Saturday.

The show will be the first of a series of special editions of Tony Stewart Live that will air on Sirius in 2010. Stewart and Yocum also will host their show from Stewart’s Eldora Speedway in Ohio before the Prelude to the Dream race in June, and will host their season-ending “Stewie Awards” broadcast during NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion’s Week.