While Newman ran a steady and solid race in his No. 39 U.S. Army Chevrolet, all eyes were on his teammate and U.S. Army team owner Tony Stewart, who won the event and captured the Sprint Cup season championship in his No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevrolet.

Stewart and race runner-up Carl Edwards tied in final points (2403), but with five wins in the 10 Chase playoff races, the tiebreaker went to Stewart. The championship was the third for Stewart, who also won season titles in 2002 and 2005.

Newman finished 10th in points, his sixth career top-10 season points finish.

As soon as Newman exited his black and gold Army race car, he headed to Victory Lane to congratulate Stewart and the No. 14 team.

“An incredible performance by Tony and the No.14 team,” said Newman. “They fought hard and deserved the title. It’s kind of bittersweet when it’s not you, but it’s awesome when it’s your teammate. The championship is a morale builder for the entire Stewart-Haas Racing organization.”

Regarding the 267-lap, 400-mile race, Newman quickly marched to the front after starting 14th. He ran as high as second and virtually ran the entire race in or near the top-10.

“We wanted to be up there contending for the win, but things didn’t quite click for us at the end,” stated Newman. “Our Army Chevrolet was strong, but we couldn’t get the track position to make a move as the race was winding down.

“Overall we had a good season, but the downside was that we didn’t perform as well as we anticipated in the Chase,” explained Newman. “We wanted better results for our Army Strong Soldiers, who inspire this team week in and week out. Driving an Army-sponsored car is a privilege and we’re going to do everything we can to make our Soldiers even more proud of their car in 2012.

Following Stewart and Edwards to the checkered flag were: Martin Truex Jr. (third), Matt Kenseth (fourth) and Jeff Gordon (fifth).

The 2012 season kicks off Sunday, Feb. 26 with the traditional Daytona 500, NASCAR’s most prestigious race.

KERRY THARP

GENE HAAS:  It’s an awesome day.  It’s really hard to get to this point and kind of leaves you speechless.

Q.  This is a team that was struggling to be in the top 35 just a few years ago, and enter Tony and his people, and now you’ve got a Sprint Cup Series championship.  Can you talk a little about that transition and what it’s meant to you?

GENE HAAS:  Well, you know, I’ve been doing it for ten years, Sprint Cup Series.

It’s hard.  I think when you enter it, you have these expectations that you can run with the big dogs and that’s a lot harder to do than you think.

But like any organization, you really do have to pay your dues.  You have to spend your time – talked to an awful lot of people when we first started.  You know, he was very thoughtful about what he told me.  His words were, I don’t know why you want to get in this sport, but if you want to be in this sport, I tell you what, I’m going to help you lose as little money as possible.  That was his words of wisdom.  So he partnered up with us and we went forward from there.

In racing, things don’t always work.  There’s changes.  When we first started out, it wasn’t a great time to enter the sport because it was kind of somewhat in the height of its popularity, drivers were at a premium, most people in the garage don’t put a lot of faith in a new team, so you have to spend your time just earning their respect.

And even that doesn’t cut it.  So many teams fail.  People spend huge amounts of money to try to get to this point.  And we just kept plugging away.  I think we weren’t doing that well as you pointed out.  We had two cars – it’s tough when you’re in that bottom 35 range.

So you just make changes.  And you know, thanks to Chevrolet, and Tony was ready to go beyond being a driver, and so that’s how it was all born.

Q.  What did you think when your people said, we have this idea, we want Tony Stewart to own half and go from there.

GENE HAAS:  You know, Tony Stewart is a superstar, we knew that.  And I had, basically as we said, back at our shop, I had the jackstands and Tony Stewart was the driver of the car and he could do that.  Unfortunately you need a wheel man.  You could have the best equipment in the world but without a good wheel man, you really don’t have a whole lot.

Just seemed like an opportunity.  I thought Tony was a little crazy for doing it, but Tony is a little bit smarter than you think sometimes.  He obviously saw some potential in what we did.  He has a lot of great relationships.  Like we had a lot of great relationships with Hendrick, so we had good equipment.  Tony had good people.  And like everything else, I mean, you know, today proves all of that right.

KERRY THARP:  We are joined by championship crew chief Darian Grubb.  Darian, just a terrific run you guys had in the Chase, winning five of ten race, and I don’t think there’s been a better performance under clutch circumstances than it was by the 14 team here tonight.  Your thoughts about winning the championship.

DARIAN GRUBB:  Five out of ten, that’s pretty damn impressive, don’t you think.

KERRY THARP:  That’s .500, my friend.

DARIAN GRUBB:  It was just fun, honestly.  We had our ups and downs with Dover and Kansas and some of the others.  But the team rallying around when we had bad days and never giving up, and then Tony never giving up either.  And just what he’s done arriving a race car has been just extremely impressive to me.  He’s been the one to go three- and four-wide and everyone else is just scared and lifts.  I think he went out and earned this championship.

Q.  How does a guy who wins a championship pull five races out of ten – just everything you accomplished, find himself without a job at the end of the year?  The whole thing is just baffling.

DARIAN GRUBB:  It is to me, honestly.  I’m not sure what’s going to happen.  But I was told early in the Chase before Charlotte that next year I was not going to be here.  We just kept fighting and doing everything we had to do every week.  It did not change anything, what the outcome was going to be.  We fought as if we were going to fight to win this championship, and we did it, and now we’ll just see in this coming week how things change.

Q.  So again, have you had any conversations with anyone else since you were given that news, and obviously, so the door is still open to remain with the Stewart-Haas organization?

DARIAN GRUBB:  As far as the latter part, I’m not sure.  I had a lot of conversations with a lot of people, telling them, please give me the courtesy of waiting until tonight to see what we could accomplish.

And now that we have done that, I guess we’ll start talking, but we’ll do a little celebrating first.

Q.  Along that same line, do you have a mind-set, are you going to wait until after Thanksgiving?  Are you going to start talking tomorrow?  And what are your personal feelings?  Do you want to stay within the organization?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Originally I always wanted to stay within the organization.  That’s the reason I came here was to help build something special.  I think we have done that.  We made the Chase all three years and had a shot at winning the championship all three years, and now this year, being able to pull it off, we accomplished our goals and that’s what we wanted to do.

As far as time line, I’ll let you know later.  We are just going to plan to celebrate, talk, see what happens from there.

Q.  You said that Tony has been the one to go three and four wide while other people are scared and they lift.  He really drove that way all night it seemed tonight, and maybe the last five, six weeks, he’s been like that.  Did he turn it up to a level?  Had you seen him drive this way before?

DARIAN GRUBB:  He did it before the Chase even started, if you look back to Atlanta.  I think he was talking about how good we made the car there, and he drove from 20th to third, and we didn’t tell him until after the race, we didn’t make a single change to the car the last three stops, just four tires and go.  He went out there and did that, drove from 20 to third and I think that’s one of those true moments that we realized that we can do it.

The cars are good, everyone behind him at Stewart-Haas Racing is incredible.  We had really strong people behind us and we all go out there and put all of the things we have worked on all year, all three years, that’s in our arsenal, Matt, all of those guys they have built speed in these cars; and the Hendrick chassis and engine has been really good, but what we do to it after we get it is even better.  So we are really looking forward to thanking everybody, celebrating and enjoying it.

Q.  What did you feel was the key for your organization to come back after the performances at Dover and Kansas?  And then, also, can you talk about what – do you know exactly what happened to cause the damage at the start of the race to the grill?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Yeah, as far as the damage at the start of the race, we are not really sure.  I know the 22 lost transmission and driveshafts.  So evidently some piece of that, he was in front of there, went in and just went through the grill and luckily did not get the radiator.  There was no debris or anything in the duct work, but Jeff and the guys did a really good job putting it back together.

And the next restart, Tony hit the double zero just because of how aggressive he was being, the double zero checked up and ripped the left side of the nose open.  So he had to come in the next stop there and fix that after he got back into the top 20 again.

So just keeping fighting with all of those small things, it was just a true team effort all night to be able to fight our way back up through there — inaudible — seeing him every day on the racetrack, that’s what I get to deal with on the radio, too.  That’s the true Tony everybody knows and loves and we all know he can go out there and be a champion and he did that for the third time tonight.

Q.  There were times this season where Tony was obviously frustrated with the way he ran, with the way the car ran, and then these last couple of week, he was just dynamite and I think Jenna said during the race, how come he doesn’t drive like this all the time.

DARIAN GRUBB:  Everybody has that in them at some point.  I was frustrated many times this year, as well.  You have to dig down deep and fight.  If you are going to do this 38 weeks a year, you’d better be able to take the lows and highs and not get too upset, and just keep a nice even keel and just keep fighting against what you are fighting against.  Luckily this week we got to where we were just fighting against the 99 and beat all 42 competitors to the win and guaranteed that championship.

Q.  You said at New Hampshire after you had won two out of two there, that the moment back in August at Michigan where Tony said, it doesn’t matter whether we make the Chase or not, lit a fire and people re-doubled their efforts.  Looking back on that now with the way y’all have performed, might that sort of slap at the team, might that have been the key moment that detonated all of this?  And how would you describe your emotions at the time?  Mad at him?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Honestly I’m not sure.  About half the team took that as disappointment and half of them took it as just being mad.  Because we do fight hard every week.  We try to build winning race cars.  It’s a tough competition out there now and you are not going to have a winning car every week and it’s very frustrating to all of us.

After the middle of the season, we just kept having things stack up against us and we didn’t have those good weeks.  It got the best of all of us.  We all had just sour attitudes and that was probably the time whether we just – we didn’t really dig in any harder but it just turned the attitude around.  So there’s no reason for us to have this sour attitude and let’s just keep doing what we know we can do and get fast race cars on the racetrack under Tony and get better and that’s what we did.

Q.  Do you think that one little media moment was the trigger moment?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Could be.  There’s multiple ones that’s happened behind closed doors, too, at the shop.  I can’t say there’s any one moment but that’s about the time frame where everybody just started turning things around if you look at what the 39 team did and the 14 team as well.  We are just a strong organization and everyone enjoys what they do for a living and that’s why we are here.

Q.  I apologize for the elementary question here, but does winning the championship, do you think that might make them change your mind and allow you to say and if they offered you a chance to stay, would it take it?

DARIAN GRUBB:  It all depends.  We’ll just have to do those talks this week and see what happens.  Obviously this is what I came in to do as a goal, and now I’ve done that with this team.  It’s not anything that I did specifically.  It’s not anything that Tony did.  It’s not anything that Gene did.  It’s the whole group as a whole.  We went out and earned this championship.  Now we’ll just see what comes out of that.

Q.  Obviously your team knows the situation, Tony knows the situation; how did you hold it all together for the past ten races, and make it work, especially the past five after they notified you?  Did you have to meet with the team or Tony?  What was the relationship like?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Definitely it was a little tough and strained but it honestly probably made the guys rally around a little more just because we all felt like we were a team to beat, and we wanted to prove that.

So we just did it.  Everybody went out there and kept doing their jobs, kept their head up and didn’t crack anybody down.  We may have even gotten closer as a team after that.  We had a couple of excursions where we went out as a team and did some activities and had a lot of fun and really enjoyed it.

Q.  How would you describe working with, what it’s like to work with Tony?

GENE HAAS:  Tony has taken on a hat of being an owner, and unfortunately there’s a lot of responsibilities that come with that as far as personnel changes and personnel problems, human resources and paying paychecks and all that stuff.  So, you know, Tony takes that to heart and I think it can upset the way he races.

So, you know, myself and Joe and all of the management at Stewart-Haas Racing, what we really tried to do in the last year or so was just isolate him from that; make sure that Tony just concentrated on the driving part.  Tony works really hard at driving.  He also works really hard at working with sponsors.  I mean, I’ve never seen a guy that spends every single day, either driving the car, or going to sponsors, or dealing with his other businesses.

Now, you know, like I say, like Joe and Brett, we all really tried to isolate Tony from that stuff and let Tony drive the car, we think that’s what he does and that’s what he does best.  But he’s also pretty good to work with, sometimes.

KERRY THARP:  Okay.  Tony Stewart has joined us.  Tony is now the three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion.  And Tony, a lot of adjectives describe what you did over the Chase.  One I keep hearing is “clutch.”  Just talk about a clutch performance by you over the last ten races.

TONY STEWART:  I would have lost every bet in the world if people would have said, hey, when you got in the Chase, that we were going to win a race or we were going to win five races and win this thing; I would have bet against us.  And I learned a big lesson with our organization and, you know, how strong a program we have and people-wise.  I mean, everybody has good cars and good equipment, but you know, I’m sure Darian’s mentioned it, it’s the people you have that make the difference.

When I said at Chicago that we didn’t belong in this Chase and taking a space that somebody else that was doing a better job could have done, there were two things that could have happened with our group of guys.  They could have hung our head and said, our guy doesn’t believe in us or they do have done, which is exactly what they did, and that’s never give up, and they dug their heels in.  They fought like the Bad News Bears.  We were the team that nobody really thought had a shot at the beginning, and you know, the longer this went, we battled adversity at Dover and Texas and we just kept fighting, this whole group up here.  I mean, Darian has done an unbelievable job in this Chase.  Just to go and be in the situations we’ve been in, and tonight, for example, to, a, go in and have to fix a damaged race car twice, go to the back and come back to the front, and then to make the call that he made at the end there, my – I need to take a nap right now.  (Laughter) My nerves are absolutely shot.  Because when he said save fuel, but run his pace, I’m like, I’m running hard to run his pace.

So he pits about two laps later, and I’m like, we can’t – we are having the discussion, I can’t run that pace and save fuel.  So it’s like, you’ve got to tell me which one is more important right now.

I’m definitely one that can’t hear in one here out the other and I’m he said something and I’m like, all right, got to go.  And then he pits and I go into fuel conservation mode, and it’s really, really hard to watch guys just come barreling past you and to stay disciplined enough to just stick to the plan.

You know, I didn’t question what the plan was or why the plan was.  I just stuck to what he told me, and you know, the lap that he called us in, he called us in going into turn one, and when I came off turn two, the fuel pressure dropped, the motor laid down a little bit but was still running.  When I got to turn three, I shut it off, coasted around to turn four, kicked the switch, kicked the clutch.  Drove down pit road.  We did the spot and he’s like keep it revving, keep it running; and I’m staring at a fuel pressure gauge that’s not building.  It’s sitting at two pounds.

And we dropped the jack, leave, get 50 foot from the last time line and it dies.  I mean, it’s dead.  It’s out.  And I’m like, we just lost this thing, and we roll about a hundred feed and it takes off and the needle goes up and we are fourth at that point, and Carl has to come back in, and it’s like, wow, that is the call of the race, the call of the Chase, and it gave me the opportunity to do what I love doing best, letting it all hang out and putting it all on the line with the restart.

And that was the one, probably hairy moment of anything that I did all day where I felt like, oohh, maybe I just lost this, and got loose underneath the 18 and the 2, and it was a three-wide drag race down the three, and the way this thing drove all day, it was really good side-bite.  I knew I could bury it down in the corner.  I just didn’t know if I was going to make the front and stick out the back, and we drive back out with the lead; and at that point you just sit there and go, this is all you can ask for is where we are at right now and whatever happens, it happens.

The funny part was listening to Darian actually get nervous at that point.  The hard part is done at that point.  We are where we need to be.  He’s like, “Okay, I’m not going giving you lap times any more, I’m giving you intervals.”

You could tell the way he said that, it made me laugh in the car, and that relaxed me more than anything the last 30 laps.  He’s just reading intervals off every lap, and we are just running hard enough to – it wasn’t like we were saving much.  But we saved just enough that if we had a green-and-white checkered, we would have saved our tires enough to do a good job at the end.  But getting in lap traffic, he was able to gain a little bit and we were able to fight through some of those guys and pull back out.

So just you never are more excited to see a white flag waving in your life.  You at least take the white and know that if the caution comes out, it’s over, and you only have to make it one more lap.  I would love to know what my lap time was the last lap.  I don’t think we gave up much.  It just was an awesome ending.

And to get both of these guys beside me their first championship, it is an unbelievable feeling.  From the ownership side, it’s more gratifying knowing that the investment that Gene’s made in this sport and Darian’s history in this sport and to be a part of getting them their first championship, that on the ownership side for me is the greatest – and if you didn’t think this was one of the most exciting Chases to watch from a fan standpoint, you’ve got to go to a doctor immediately and get checked out.  So I don’t even know what else to say about it.

Q.  You were making three- and four-wide passes tonight that we all were kind of left with our mouths open and then A.J. said that, “I think Tony drove the best race of his life.”    Was this the best race of your life?  And is it fair to say that you’ve been driving this way for four, five, six weeks?

TONY STEWART:  I think so.  But as much as I would love to beat my chest and say that I’ve been just doing something supernatural, I mean, I’ve had cars that have given me that confidence to do that.

And you know, to go four-wide on the front stretch like that and to have the confidence that when you get to turn one, that you can make the corner still, I mean, that’s a good-handling race car that gives you that.  I mean, I’ve got – I’ve had confidence in these things and you look at the first half of our year and how many things that happened, and lots of things that never happened at the end of the day, we would battle to a respectable finish out of it.

But we are disappointed because we knew there was more there.  It’s really frustrating.  But in the Chase here, it just seemed like finally we got through that bad luck string, and everything worked like it’s supposed to.  No curveballs, no change ups.  Just business as usual.  Today was the first time I thought, oh, man, when he said, we have got to come in, it’s like, oh, I didn’t question it.  I didn’t know what was going on, because I never even felt the impact.

Normally you feel something if you hit something with the nose of the car and to hit it with the wire mesh like that, that screen, it just kills that.  How it didn’t go through the radiator, I have no idea.

But, you know, to have something like that actually go our way for once, it was nice to finally get that bad luck streak out of the way and get to where we could work on just doing what we do best.

Q.  Was this the best race of your life?

TONY STEWART:  Man, I feel like I passed half the State of Florida (Laughter).  118 cars is a lot of cars to pass in one race.  I don’t care what series you’re in or where you’re at.  To do it under the circumstances and the pressure that we had today, I’m very, very proud of that, and man, I’ve been racing 31 years, I can’t even remember some of the races I’ve won.  But I would have to say that under the circumstances, I’ve got to believe that this is definitely one of the greatest races of my life.

Q.  You drove today like you were not going to lose this race; you were going to either – you were either going to win this thing or you were leaving it all on –

TONY STEWART:  I think the last five years, the entire NASCAR nation thought they might never have a shot at another championship again.

I think the one thing that I was constantly reminded by in the media is we were the last guys to win one before Jimmie started that string.  You look at Jeff and guys that have been successful in this series and had not won, and we had won a more recent one than those guys have; you can’t discard it and say that you can’t win it.

It’s just, what do you have to do to get back on top.  You know, I don’t think anybody ever has that feeling.  The day that you just say, I can’t do it any more, you might as well just announce your retirement and find some young kid that will do it.

Q.  I know you just noted – congratulations, gentlemen, all of you, by the way.  I know you just noted that this is one much your best performances of your career.  Your hero said it was the best.  What does it mean that someone you admire to that level considers this performance that stellar?

TONY STEWART:  For those of you who don’t know, when we were doing one of the ESPN interviews, they had a surprise phone call for us on the line, and it was A.J. Foyt.  And to hear him say that that was the best race he’s ever seen me run, brings a tear to your eye.  I mean, not many people can have their lifelong hero say that and hear you say that.

It’s just very, very flattering.  The one thing out of the conversation I was surprised, even when I drove Silver Crown cards for him and George Schneider, I would still win the race and he would tell me everything I did wrong during the race.  For once he didn’t tell me I did anything wrong.  I’m like, I don’t know how I’m going to top this now.  My life is complete.  If I get hit on a golf cart now, I’m good to go because A.J. said I did everything perfect for once.

It was an honor.  That was probably one of the coolest phone calls I’ve ever had in my life obviously.  You know, to go into a day like today when you know what’s at stake and it’s not just – you know, it’s the head-to-head battle, obviously one guy versus another; but with 40 other variables out there, and have him leading the first half of the race and dominating it like he did; if he stayed second or third, we still had to win the race, so to have a battle like that, you just sit here you and shake your head and sit here and figure, it was one of the coolest championship battles, but what do I have to do to beat that guy?  I felt like I had to throw everything I had in my arsenal out.

And when we were coming around with the flag sticking out of the car, he walked up and he said you’re going to have fun with this for the rest of your life.  You couldn’t ask for a better guy.  And he goes, “I hope a year from now, we are in the same battle again just like this.”  And that – everybody respects Carl for the person that he is, and you know, there’s been a lot of things that have happened that make you go, is there sincerity involved in what he says.  But there’s no cameras there when he said that.  He just came and talked to me driver to driver, and that means a lot and it shows who he is as a person I think.

I know there’s times he hasn’t done everything perfect and he’s taken it upon himself to settle scores, but I think deep down, at moments like that and at Texas when he came out there and we had that conversation, it shows who he really is as a person, and he’ll win a championship.  He’ll be up here in our position again, maybe be the guy on the losing end but when he gets it, hope he has to beat us to do it again.  I appreciated that championship battle.  It was a David versus Goliath battle to the end.

To have the week that we had, and the sparring that we had at Media Day, and to come here and finish the season running first and second, I just – I don’t know how it gets better than that.  No matter what the outcome was, there would have been no shame in finishing second to him tonight in the championship.  But to have that battle come down to me, that’s epic.

Q.  You sounded so calm on the radio, reassuring your team, kind of a leader on the team, but who was reassuring you?  Did you have some doubts at any point?  Did you think, maybe this is just not meant to be?

TONY STEWART:  I think this summer has kind of been character-building to a certain degree.  The good thing is, I think the guys, when you’re in the role that I am, I feel like that there’s some added pressure there from my standpoint, even being in the car.  Darian is the guy that they feed off in the pits obviously, because they are the – Darian is the guy that they read.  But I think we have been a really good team from that aspect of – that was – when we hung the lug nut today, I thought – I thought that was one of the key moments in the race where, you know, you could lose your composure, and I think Darian’s calling of the audible of saying, we are going to make this a two-tire stop now, that was huge.  We didn’t give up any more track position.  We had a car that was fast.  And that was big, and I pulled into the stop and had no idea what’s happened and that’s probably the first time in the Chase I raised my voice, what the heck just happened.  And Darian’s demeanor from when we started in 2009, is he’s been calm and you know, he told me it hung the lug nut but the way he says it, in a way, that, just, all right, it is what it is.  It’s nothing to get excited about.  You know, when we had the restart that we had, it’s like, hey, you know, you looked at how the first 109 laps went before the rain delay came, it’s like, so we hung the lug nut and we are back to 12 now.

I think the way our season went and the way the first 100 laps of the race went, it was easy to put into perspective, it wasn’t as good of a drama as we thought.  Carl made a pit stop, but that wasn’t when they paid the points and dropped the flag.  There was a lot of racing to go.

And it goes back to nobody has ever quit on this team and you know, like I said, I think the season has been character-building and when something like that’s happened it’s easy to feel like you’re backing yourself in a corner but the way our day was and to battle back from the back twice in those first hundred laps, I thought gave us that confidence that it wasn’t the end of the world and that we could recover from it.

Q.  You had to make a tough decision, you said, when you parted ways with Bobby Hutchins –

TONY STEWART:  I wasn’t responsible for that.  I was responsible for getting Darian and Bobby and Tony Gibson.  They were the guys that really said, this is what we need people-wise and personnel wise.

So you know, Gene gave me the faith and the trust to go get the people that I felt like that we needed to get, and a lot of that was Rick Hendrick, too.  Rick was the one that said, hey, this guy is the guy that I think is going to be a good fit for you.

You know, that’s the push in the right direction that you need from somebody like that to give you that confidence.  But Bobby and Darian and Tony together, I think all three were very instrumental in orchestrating what personnel we needed to take what resources Gene had already established to make it all work and make it all come together.

Q.  You’ve obviously heaped praise on Darian and deservedly so.  But before you came in here, he had mentioned that it’s under his impression that he’s out of a job for next season.  Can you at all shed some light on his status?  I know it’s kind of awkward with him sitting right there.

TONY STEWART:  I know what his status is for the rest of the night, and I’m going to get him drunk.  (Laughter).

Tomorrow if we can just pick our heads up off the floor without throwing up, I’m going to be extremely happy, but I’ll worry about that tomorrow.

Q.  Is there a chance that he could return or can you say anything?

TONY STEWART:  There’s a lot of things in the off-season and decisions that have to be made.  Obviously we wanted to get through this championship battle first, and we’ll sit down as a group, obviously, this week and figure out the direction of our program.

But, you know, the good thing right now is that we are sitting up here right now as champions and I don’t think any of us are really too concerned other than having fun tonight and enjoying the accomplishment we have had over the last ten weeks.

Q.  Given that, does that put a different perspective on this championship run that despite that uncertainty and I would assume that created more duress, Darian talked about how maybe it was a little bit of a tension builder at times, can you talk about how you were able to overcome that and still do everything and win the championship despite all that?

TONY STEWART:  I think the way this whole Chase has worked out for us, for us to battle through a number of variables to get where we are is remarkable.  But it shows the strength of the people that we have and you know it definitely – it definitely makes you go, how did we do this, how did we overcome a lot of variables to get where we are.  But at the same time, it makes it very gratifying because you are able to take a less than perfect scenario and have success with it.

So, I think we are all up here going to take a lot of pride in that.

Q.  You kind of spoke about this a little bit, but people that know you well have said, I’ve never seen him more determined.  And we have seen you through various championships, but this one felt different, almost like Babe Ruth, pointing what you were going to do, and you did.  Can you talk about your approach and determination and the way it played out, especially in the last two or three weeks.

TONY STEWART:  Boy did I look like a genius after doing this.  (Laughter).

You know, it’s like I said, I mean, it’s one thing for me to have confidence as a driver, but you have to have confidence in your guys and your equipment and the guys making the calls.

You know, I honestly think the turning point for us was Martinsville.  We had struggled at Martinsville the three races before this fall, and to battle, to stay on the lead lap, and once we stayed on the lead lap there, to battle back to the lead and to win the race with the drama that we have won the race, I have yet to have anybody tell me who has passed for the lead on the outside to win the race at Martinsville.

To leave there doing something remarkable, I feel that was the turning point in the Chase for us.  And we backed it up a week later by winning Texas and not only winning Texas but by beating the guy that we are racing the points for, leading the most laps and really making a statement that, hey, do not count – don’t make the mistake of counting us out of this.

And you know, I just think that was a huge turning point for us, and you get that confidence that everything is going right and that – it’s so much easier when things are going well.  Everybody relaxes.  Everybody is calm.  You’re not trying to mentally figure out what the missing piece of the puzzle is.

You know, I think Martinsville was kind of that step that we may not have had a perfect car that day and we may not have had a perfect race, but we fought through it and came out on top, and to battle like that at Texas all day, it just – at that point, you sit there and you go, we have got as good a shot, if not better, than anybody else out there, and it doesn’t matter who is still left.  We are a contender now.  And that’s the kind of confidence you want going into the last two weeks.

Q.  This race had an epic feel to it from the beginning, Carl said it was an unbelievable movie the way it unfolded.  Did you have any feeling or sense of that in the seat of the car as the night was going on?

TONY STEWART:  Gene says I’ve got to watch the rerun.

KERRY THARP:  It’s on at 1:00 am.

TONY STEWART:  I’ll be up.  (Laughter) may not be able to focus on the screen, but I’ll be up.

It did.  I don’t know that it necessarily had that feel, but you know, the story line was pretty amazing.  You’ve got a guy that goes out and is leading the points standings, qualifies on the pole and is dominating the first part of the race.

The guy that’s the underdog and the guy that’s three points behind is having to jump hurdles and jump through hoops to salvage their day.  And then we come and battle back – when we had that red flag at lap 109, I’m sitting out there, I’m just laughing with the crew guys.  There’s crew guys going, what are you doing, what’s going on here.

And they are going, where are you coming from?  I’m like, where else am I going to go?  I don’t have anything else to do.  If I crash this thing on the way to the front, so be it.  And it wasn’t that I was throwing caution to the wind.  We were trying to be calculated and methodical about what we were doing.  But the story lines are total opposites.  You have the guy that’s got the perfect race going, he’s leading laps and when he’s not leading, he’s second or third, and he is right where he wants to be and he’s in the position he wants to be in all day long at that point and you have the other guy that’s like, man, can we get there from here.  You feel like you have the big fish on the hook and you’re running out of line and wondering if you’re going to run out soon.

When you sit there and when we took the lead the first time, I think it had to make him go, how did they – you know in the red flag he’s sitting there going what’s going on with them.  Well, they have come back from the back twice and are fifth now?  You know he’s thinking that.

And I’m sitting there with Jack Roush, and I walk by Jack and I say, “Tell your boy to get you will on the wheel because I’m on my way and I’m coming.”  I’ve screwed with everybody all week, why am I going to stop now?  Jack looks at me like I’ve got three heads all of a sudden and I don’t know it’s because he couldn’t see me or what was going on, he kind of looked at me – (Laughter) I’m joking, come on.  Doug is sitting there laughing because he know what is I’m doing, and Jack looks at me funny, went about my business and got back in the car, laughing about it.  We still have nothing to lose and just keep slinging it at him.  When we wind up taking the lead, he has to be sitting there going, how did they do that, they got tore up twice, how did they get there.

So, yeah, storyline was pretty cool I thought, up to that point.

Q.  This is a little bit of a provincial question in that this is big news –

TONY STEWART:  You have to use small words.  I have no idea what kind of question that means.

Q.  It means back in your home state this is really big news, you winning another championship when you were coming up, everybody wanted to be the next A.J. Foyt and now guys in that state want to be the next Tony Stewart –

TONY STEWART:  They should set their standards much higher than that.

Q.  Talk about bringing this title back to your home state.

TONY STEWART:  I’m proud of where I came from.  I mean, you know, my career path made a pretty drastic turn and I don’t know how many people actually know.  I had a chance to drive for A.J. when the IRL started, and I had been working on a deal with Harry to join the Busch Series at the time and was really close to having that done, and my intention was to do that, and then all of a sudden the opportunity came to drive for A.J. and the IRL and the IRL only had five races.

So I had every intention of doing both.  I was used to running Silver Crown car, midgets, all in the same night and I couldn’t see why I couldn’t run five IndyCar races and the schedule – A.J. kind of put the kibosh to that, he wanted me to be an IndyCar driver or NASCAR driver, and that was a pretty hard decision to make; to tell your hero that you are going to turn down an opportunity to drive his race car to go do something else.

But I had worked with the Rainier family long enough, I didn’t want to let them down and I didn’t necessarily want to turn down that opportunity – didn’t have to worry about what was going to happen.  From where I grew up, and my heritage – demanding moments and I take a lot of pride in the fact that we are going to be bringing a trophy back home.

Q.  What’s it going to be like?

TONY STEWART:  I already know that Bob at the Dairy Queen has already been giving away ice cream tonight and he will tell me to the penny exactly how much he lost doing it, literally to the cent, he will tell me how much money it cost him.  (Laughter).

I live in a town with 35,000 people and I’ve still got the same friends that I had growing up.  You know, when I go home, people let me just be me.  They see me in a restaurant, they will come by and say hi.  I’ve been back home long enough now, I think the news wore off, and I’m just another person.  It’s a sense of pride that when the people in your community come up and say they are proud of you and you did a good job, that means a lot.  I’m excited about the day I get to go home now.

Q.  You obviously had a lot of fun poking Carl and whatnot this week but –

TONY STEWART:  I don’t poke Carl.  I made that real clear.  I like women.  (Laughter) I won’t be poking Carl.  I pick on Carl a lot.

Q.  Try to rephrase the question.

TONY STEWART:  I just really, really want to make sure nobody gets the wrong idea about this.

Q.  It will be an interesting transcript.  But anyway.  Regardless, was there ever a moment where in your head there was just a slight bit of doubt or nervousness or whatever it might be that kind of creeped into your head during this whole run leading up to it?

TONY STEWART:  Oddly enough, I mean, there should have been a moment like that.  And I can’t – that’s been the one thing that’s probably been the one variable in the equation that I have not been able to understand and get my hands around, is that there just never was that moment of feeling despair and like, can we really do this.

We were in the perfect scenario of coming into this weekend with no possible shot of losing anything contrary to what my favorite guy mentioned on Media Day there, we honestly just did not – we physically could not lose anything.  There was nothing to lose.  And there was everything to gain.  And with that, there is absolute – it takes so much pressure off when you know that if anything happens, that you are not going to be any worse than second and considering the fact that ten weeks ago, we were saying that we were wasting a spot in the Chase to begin with, second wasn’t so bad, if that’s what happened.

But at the same time, I mean, you don’t have to dangle the caret in front of us to get our spurs jingling to get excited about what we can get and what we can reach.

I meant what I said in Media Day, that it’s a dangerous combination when you give a guy a shot at something and he can’t lose anything.  That’s a potent situation to be in for our organization and our team and myself.  I honestly can’t say that there was that moment that I felt that way.  I guess it was just the perfect scenario; I really wanted to leave Phoenix.  Honestly, I wanted to leave Phoenix with the point lead and I thought that would really be the best opportunity to rattle his confidence.

But in hindsight, we came here, and there was never a moment where I was wound up – I was up at 2:30 in the morning this morning, couldn’t sleep, and I was watching every stupid movie you could think of on TV because I was having fun.  And it just – and I couldn’t explain it.  I don’t understand it.  But that’s where we were at with it.  It just felt natural.  There was something that felt right with it, and then never had that moment where I felt like we couldn’t do this or that something could go wrong.  If it did, it did.  But we had more to gain than we had to lose.

I can’t shut up tonight, either.  I’m ready to get out of here.  Somebody stop me.  (Laughter).

Q.  Darian was talking earlier, and he’s been telling us for a while, he’s felt like the cars have been good most of the season and he mentioned the Atlanta race where you came from like 20th to third, and talking about all of the great changes they made and they told you afterwards there were no changes made at all –

TONY STEWART:  You didn’t change anything?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Not at Atlanta.

TONY STEWART:  You liar.

Q.  Was this turnaround more about you recapturing something you had lost, a confidence more so than the cars and that?

TONY STEWART:  I mean, I don’t know.  I’ve been deceived here by my crew chief.  I had no idea that that’s what was going on in Atlanta.

I don’t know.  I’ve been doing this a long time.  I’ve never felt like I really lost anything.  When we won that Out law race earlier this year, I know it has nothing to do – inaudible – cars and win races, and I’m not just stuck doing it here and not just able to win here and nowhere else.

So maybe it sparked something then, I don’t know, but I never felt like anything really changed from that standpoint.  I just, you know, I had a lot of fun this year.  I mean, Darian and Gene have let me go off racing any night I wanted to race and I got to run 30 nights this year away from NASCAR and had a blast doing it.  I think that was as much as it scares Eddie Jarvis and our management worrying about me getting hurt and how many people it can affect, Darian can tell you, when I would come back, it energized me.  It was like hitting a reset button.  It was fun.  I had fun racing again this year.  I think it transferred to what we were doing with the Cup car, too.  We would have fun Saturday night and Sunday, even if it wasn’t right or didn’t work out, I still had fun doing what I was doing again, and I think that made a big difference.

So, I don’t know if I really thought about it a bunch, but maybe it did.

Q.  You’ve talked before about the history of NASCAR and tonight you’ve made that history.  What do you want the history books to say about you and your season as you look forward for that?

TONY STEWART:  They can write whatever they want.  The biggest thing to me is we got the trophy and I think the biggest thing is it’s not about what they write about me.  It’s what they write about us.  I mean, I really appreciate the opportunity that Gene and Joe Custer have given us, and I appreciate what Darian has done from day one.  He played more than a crew chief role.

And there were a lot of really good people that have had to work outside of the box of what their job description was to get us here.  I think that’s what makes great teams great is people don’t just sit there and look at their job as a 9 to 5 job or whatever their hours are and they show up and leave whenever that hour gets there.  I know there’s been times when he has had to come in and stay late and there’s people that have made that sacrifice.  To the best of our knowledge, I don’t think anybody has complained about it.  We just have a bunch of racers and I probably take the most pride in that.  We have people that come from so many different racing backgrounds, and their attitude at the shop is just a bunch of racers who love racing and winning races and I’m really proud of that.

Q.  The other day we talked about book ending, now that you’ve achieved it, what do you feel like it means to your organizations?

TONY STEWART:  Very proud.  Donny won the last sprint car race of the season last night, an USAC race at Tucson and Levy won the last race of the year with our Chevy car and to be able to come here tonight and do this, we have – Levy won the Silver Crown championship, Sprint Car Championship.  We ran second with Donny Schatz and third with Steve in World of Outlaws.  I don’t know where Ryan officially ended up tonight points-wise – tenth.  So two cars in the Top-10 in the Sprint Cup Series, I’m pretty proud of that.  Probably as close to being a father as I’m going to get for a while, and I’m pretty proud of all my kids, even though one is 50 years old and still winning races.

I’m proud of our people.  I feel like I’ve said it from day one, I’ve been a part of this organization, I learned a lot from Joe Gibbs and how he was able to assemble the right people to do the right jobs.  I feel like I’ve learned a very valuable lesson from him, and I think that I’ve been able to take that approach with every entity that we have and we have been successful and I’m proud of Chevy being on board and STP and Armor All and all of the people that have believed in the programs I’ve wanted to build and helped us make them successful.

Q.  Why would you leave Joe Gibbs Racing when you did?  You were comfortable there, you could win there, you didn’t have to have any real responsibilities and take all this John –

TONY STEWART:  Joe would tell you different.  He would tell you I had all kind of responsibilities.

Q.  What kind of pressure do you take with you?  Do you wonder, am I ever going to win again?  You’re leaving a really comfortable, nice place.

TONY STEWART:  I think the variable that was the little bit of the push over the top that I needed, it came from Rick Hendrick, and Rick had had a relationship with Gene and the two teams working together in the past.  When Rick called me and said, hey, this may be an opportunity for you, and where I was at in my life and my career, you know, I guess I’ve never been scared to step outside my comfort zone with opportunities.  We own three racetracks now, we have our world out law teams, our USAC teams.  I didn’t have a background in any of that.  I don’t have a background in business.

But you know, it just seemed like everything, every challenge that we took, we were able to somewhat kind some sort of success with it, and Rick talked to me on the phone one night and he goes, I’m not going to let this fail.  That’s words that I have never forgot.  And there’s been times when I’ve had to call and say, hey, I don’t know what to do, I’m kind of stuck.  But I need your input.  I just need somebody to tell me if what I’m thinking is right, wrong or indifferent.  And he’s been really strong in that role with me.  So you’ve got to have people you believe in.  You’ve got to have people you trust, and it’s just another chapter in my life that it’s like, this is a great opportunity for what’s going on now and what can happen down the road one day.  There’s a day that I’m not going to be driving but I don’t want to leave the sport.  It’s a great opportunity for me to drive till Gene fires me from the driver’s seat and I get to sit on the pit box with him.  I like that opportunity.  It was an opportunity to have a fresh start, a fresh beginning and a new challenge, and I love new challenges for some reason.

Q.  In that same vein, did you ever regret the decision to become a co-owner and what do you feel this championship can do for your organization as a whole?

TONY STEWART:  I would be lying if I said there were a lot of nights I laid my head on a pillow and said, have you lost your mind.  It was a lot easier being a driver.  And there was a lot of responsibility that came with being a driver in a big organization, but you know, there’s a lot of worries.  It’s still a business.  This is a big industry and it’s my goal from day one has been to be able to look Gene Haas in the eyes and shake his hand and say, hey, it didn’t cost you a dime this year to go race, I want you to just come to the track and have fun and enjoy what you’ve built.  Our economy has been rough the last three years and it’s been a challenge to do that.

But I’m proud with the new partners that we have had come on board.  We are in the best financial situation our company has been in and there’s still an inventory of races to be sold in our company.  Hopefully an effort like we have had in the Chase and the championship like this can be a push that some of these companies need to maybe come on board.  So this is big for our company as an organization.  It’s a hard time with the economy and definitely a championship like this is huge.

Q.  As far as you’re being compared to the greatest drivers ever, like your heroes, can you share with us what you feel you have, physical and mental abilities, that you can share with the greatest people that ever got behind the wheel?

TONY STEWART:  All you have to do is look at me and — inaudible — looking how I compare to A.J. Foyt and following that same path – don’t sit there in a gym and don’t eat the right foods every day and can still go out and do what they do, take some pride in that today.  (Laughter) I’m going to take a lot of pride in a lot of stuff.

But, you know, I’m nothing –

Q.  Inaudible.

TONY STEWART:  Yeah, I represent you guys – not you, Jenna.  And some of you more than others obviously.  (Laughter).

I have a hard time putting it in perspective what it means with these guys and the greats of these sports and the legends of this sport.  You feel like you’re comparing apples to oranges because you’re comparing different eras in our sport.  It’s hard to put that in perspective I think.

But you know, I feel like I’m a part of a time in NASCAR when the competition’s better than it’s ever been.  It’s more competitive than it’s ever been.  And to be in a format that’s very tight, very competitive, and you can’t have anything go wrong to win five races out of a ten-race Chase, and to win closest battle in NASCAR history, you know, no matter what the record books say at the end of the day and the greats that are a part of it, it’s a huge honor just to be in those record books with those guys, and you never feel like you’re – I don’t care how many races you win, how many championships you win, you never feel like you measure up to the greats of the sport.  That’s what makes trying so much fun.

KERRY THARP:  Tony, you certainly put on one outstanding performance the past ten weeks.  You’re the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion.  Much deserved.  Congratulations on truly a terrific performance here tonight that I think not only the folks in this room, but millions across the world are going to look back and say that this was one of the greats in all of sports.  Congratulations.

And I do have one final question for you.

TONY STEWART:  Boy do I feel like I should really be nervous, I felt like I’ve skirted around – I’ve played dodgeball for an hour up here and thought I was going to make it out of here okay.

KERRY THARP:  By winning this race tonight, Tony is going to take home a Contender boat that is built right here in Homestead Florida and it’s right out in victory lane, 400 horsepower worth a lot of money.  Do you have any idea what you’re going to name your boat?

TONY STEWART:  I just hope I don’t get so screwed up tonight that I find the keys on accident and try riding it around on the lake on the backstretch.  (Laughter) Maybe we’ll call it, “Hope We Don’t Screw Up.”

Thank you, guys, appreciate it.

With a victory in Sunday’s Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Stewart became the seventh champion to win the season finale in his championship season. He out-dueled runner-up Carl Edwards in a finale befitting a championship showdown, tying Edwards in points – but winning the championship on a tiebreaker. Stewart’s five wins bested Edwards’ one, clinching the title for Stewart.

Stewart won his first championship in 2002 and second in 2005. The Indiana native now joins David Pearson, Lee Petty, Darrell Waltrip and Cale Yarborough – all NASCAR Hall of Fame members or inductees – as three-time champions. Nine drivers in NASCAR Sprint Cup history have won three or more championships.

Stewart entered the season-ending race trailing Edwards by three points. It marked the second consecutive season and fourth time since the inception of the position-based points system in 1975 the champion has overcome a points deficit entering the final race.

Stewart, co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing with Gene Haas, is the first driver-owner to claim the championship since Alan Kulwicki in 1992. The 2011 season is the organization’s third under its current ownership.

Stewart failed to win a race during the 26-race regular season. But he quickly caught fire, winning the first two races of the Chase, at Chicagoland Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway. He ultimately won five times – twice on consecutive weekends – to break the record for most Chase wins in a single season. Stewart has won 11 times in Chase history, second only to Jimmie Johnson’s 20.

Entering Sunday’s season finale, Stewart had led the points just twice in 2011, ironically after Edwards’ only victory in Las Vegas and following the fall race at New Hampshire. He finished the year with 44 career victories, tied for 15th on the all-time wins list.

Those wins wound up trumping Edwards’ consistency during both the regular season and the playoffs. Stewart’s nine top-five and 19 top-10 finishes trailed Edwards, however, the series-high five wins ultimately were the decisive factor in the championship’s outcome.

YOUR THOUGHTS ON CONTENDING FOR YOUR THIRD NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES TITLE: “I’m excited about it. I’m not normally known as being much of a qualifier so 15^th I’m pretty content with right now. I think our car, we spent a lot of time working on just the race setup. I feel like we spent the time we had this morning and I’m appreciative to NASCAR that they were able to re-do the schedule to get us all the practice considering what is on the line this weekend…get us the practice we all got. I think we’re going to be alright. We just have to sit and wait tonight until tomorrow.”

HOW DOES THE CAR YOU HAD TODAY IN PRACTICE COMPARE TO CARS YOU HAVE HAD IN PAST RACES HERE AT HOMESTEAD? “I don’t know. This place changes so much from year-to-year anyway. It’s kind of hard to compare them. I think today we had a car…the good news is every time we made a change it responded in some way and that is a really good sign. It is hard when you make changes to the car and it just doesn’t react to anything. That’s when you get nervous. Having a car today that responded to the changes that we made each time we went out, we were able to sit there, Darian (Grubb, crew chief) and I have already talked since qualifying and have a game plan for tomorrow and really can go back and look at the practice we had and sit down and say ‘Okay, this worked. This didn’t work’. It gives us all a direction of what we have got to do for tomorrow. Pretty good feeling about the car that we’ve got. We’ll see where it ends up.”

YOU AND THE NO. 99 (CARL EDWARDS) TOOK VASTLY DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO PRACTICE TODAY. WERE YOU SURPRISED AT ALL THAT HE DIDN’T USE SECOND PRACTICE TO WORK ON RACE TRIM AT ALL? “I didn’t even know actually until after the second practice was over and I looked at the time sheets, I didn’t realize they didn’t do any race runs there. They’re either going to look like geniuses doing it or not. You look at how many laps we ran, we spent a lot of time trying to find the combination was for race trim. We got the one-lap deal out of the way, now we have to worry about the 400 miles.”

CAN YOU TALK BIGGER PICTURE HOW THIS CHAMPIONSHIP PUSH HAS HELPED YOUR OVERALL ORGANIZATION AND HOW DIFFERENT THAN IN ’02 AND ’05, THESE ARE YOUR PEOPLE GOING ALONG FOR THE RIDE WITH YOU TOMORROW? “Yes, but it really doesn’t feel that way. I mean, it feels just like it did when I was at Gibbs (Joe Gibbs Racing) in ’02 and ’05 where it was a big group of us all in it together and that’s the way it is for everybody at Stewart-Haas Racing  I guess the general feel really hasn’t changed. I’ve never walked into that shop feeling like I was the guy running anything. Everybody has their job. Everybody does their job at Stewart-Haas. I’m just one piece of the equation. I have felt like from day one that it’s that feeling kind of just been the same as it was at Gibbs. I’m their driver and that is the way I’ve always looked at it.”

WE CERTAINLY APPRECIATE YOUR CANDOR THIS WEEK, BUT, GIVEN THAT, HOW HAPPY ARE YOU THAT ALL THE TALKING IS BASICALLY DONE AND YOU CAN GET ON WITH THE RACING? “I don’t know. After sitting there in the media deal the other day, I was kind of having fun talking with him (Carl Edwards). He’s like an easy target. It’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight in that battle. We get to go do what we do for a living tomorrow. It’s nice that 30 hours from now we are all going to know how it played out and shook out. It’s been a fun week obviously. Like I said, he is a fun guy to pick at. He makes himself an easy target, so that makes it easier. He is a good race car driver and that is what we are going to get to face tomorrow.”

YOU ARE GOOD WITH YOUR 15^TH STARTING SPOT; CARL (EDWARDS) IS ON THE POLE. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HIS ADVANTAGE, BEING 14 SPOTS AHEAD OF YOU:
“Well, the biggest advantage is the pit stall. Obviously, having that first pit box is a huge advantage in this sport. They did a good job qualifying, but that pit selection does not guarantee anything, it is definitely an advantage but, it does not mean it is going to work out for you and get accomplished what you need to get done. I sat there and looked at our first two races that we won in the “Chase” we started 26^th and 20^th. It would be nice to start on the front row right now, but we have proven time and time again. I mean I have 13 poles in 13 years, and we have won 42 races now or 41 races whatever it is. We have proven that you do not have to do it from the pole for sure. It is a luxury at this point; don’t start etching his name on the trophy yet.”

WITH CARL (EDWARDS) RUNNING SO WELL IN PRACTICE TODAY, STARTING ON THE POLE TOMORROW, PEOPLE ARE SAYING HE HAD THE ADVANTAGE, DO YOU FEEL IN ANY WAY THAT YOU ARE AT A DISADVANTAGE GOING INTO THIS RACE TOMORROW?
“No, you guys need to look at the time sheets. He put up a fast lap, his lap times fell off pretty hard in the one long run that he did. Looking at that, I mean that is why I am still really confident that what we did was the right thing today. Our times do not fall off as hard as his did. Now weather they have something figured out for tomorrow that they did not show today, who knows, but after looking at the time sheet, I felt a lot better about what I was seeing. To look at that final practice, it doesn’t tell the story of the session. The two best cars I feel like are the No. 88 car and the No. 4 car and they were I think 22^nd and 26^th and we were sitting there 24^th, so the guys I think that are the guys we are going to watch tomorrow for the race win, were guys that are back there in the same general vicinity that I was at. Looking at the times that were consistently the best cars in that second session, I don’t think looking at the time sheets today are telling the accurate story about what is going on and what is coming up tomorrow.”

ON THE HOMESTEAD-MIAMI SPEEDWAY AND HOW IT HAS EVOLVED OVER THE YEARS
“Well, it was a rectangle, and then it went to flat, and now it’s banked. It’s definitely had three different distinct shapes and styles to it. But it’s kind of cool because I actually got to come here the first time when it was still a rectangle. So, that was the first Nationwide race that I actually tried to qualify for was here at Homestead. So, it was kind of cool to see that, but it definitely has changed a lot. I think the current configuration is probably the best configuration they’ve had. It’s definitely provided the best racing given multiple grooves, which I don’t think they had before. With the rectangular, it was very hard and very one-lane. When it was flat, it was still one-lane around the bottom for the most part. But, this configuration, as we saw in the Truck race and practice today, guys are all the way from the bottom line all the way to the top and everywhere in between. So, I think the shape of this is a pretty good layout.”

SOME PEOPLE SAY WHEN YOU DO A LOT OF LAPS DURING PRACTICE, YOU ARE USUALLY PRETTY GOOD. IS THAT ACCURATE?
“I think so to a certain degree. I was really proud of our guys today. Obviously with the rain that we had, we were going to get an hour and 20 minutes both sessions and today we got an hour and a half and then an hour. So we didn’t quite have the same amount of time. But we only had a half-our turnaround between the two sets, so I felt like we did a really good job. I felt like our guys did a really good job today of utilizing our hour and a half and our hour of practice and getting a lot of changes done and going out and getting that data base for tomorrow. So I felt like we were able to make a lot of changes but at the same time, when it doesn’t feel good, you run a couple of laps and you come in because you’re like that’s not working. So, I think it kind of is a good sign the fact that we were running a lot of laps each run was a good indication that I was happy with what we had. I just wanted to see how it was going to hang one or if it was going to change. So, I think from the start of practice on, we’ve had a car that’s pretty close; we’ve just been trying to work around little things and trying to find things and see how it reacts to it.”

HOW IS GENE HAAS DOING IN THE LEAD-UP TO THIS RACE TOMORROW? IS HE EXCITED?
‘Oh, he just keeps saying how exciting and fun it is. And that’s what makes me smile with our role together. He’s invested a lot into this sport over the last seven years and to finally see him have an opportunity like this makes me very proud. That’s the part where I take the helmet off and the driver’s side away and I say, ‘This is a guy that believed in me enough to want me to be a part of his organization and make me an equal partner with him.’ To be able to help put him in a position like this is something I’m very proud of. So he’s having fun but he’s still Gene. He just kind of hangs around on the side and you don’t really see him standing out much but he’s kind of fun like that. I mean he’s not a guy who wants to stand out and be in front of the cameras all the time. He just wants to come to the race track and enjoy his race cars and his race teams. And I think he’s had a lot of fun doing that this year.”

“We felt the U.S. Army Chevy was going to produce a better qualifying effort than what we managed,” said Newman, who has three top-10 finishes in nine career Sprint Cup starts at Homestead. “We just didn’t get everything out of the (qualifying) run. I under-drove turns one and two and that’s what probably made the difference because I felt I nailed turns three and four. Based on our two practice sessions today, I feel we should be in good shape for tomorrow’s race.”

Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevrolet Impala, will start 15th after turning a lap of 31.154 seconds at 173.332 mph.

“Well, the qualifying deal isn’t how our race is going to play out. So, this is one lap of 400 hundred miles we’ve still got to go,” said Stewart, who won at Homestead in 1999 and 2000. “Fifteenth is pretty solid. We didn’t have a pole-winning car today, but our Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevy is pretty good in race trim. I’m glad we spent more time working on race trim than qualifying trim. We’ll see how it plays out.”

Carl Edwards captured his 10th career Sprint Cup pole, his second of the season and his second at Homestead by posting a lap of 30.775 seconds at 175.467 mph.

Edwards leads Stewart by just three points in the championship standings. A win by Stewart will clinch his third Sprint Cup title, augmenting the championships he earned in 2002 and 2005.

Martin Truex Jr., will start on the outside of row one as he timed in at 30.891 seconds at 174.808 mph. Kasey Kahne was third (30.931 seconds at 174.582 mph), while Kurt Busch (30.942 seconds at 174.520 mph) and Brad Keselowski (30.947 seconds at 174.492 mph) rounded out the top-five.

Forty-eight drivers attempted to qualify for the Ford 400. Those not making the cut in the 43-car field were Scott Speed, Reed Sorenson, Mike Skinner, Scott Riggs and Grant Enfinger.

As far as manufacturers, Ford took the top spot with Edwards’ pole-winning run. Toyota was next best via Truex’s runner-up effort, while Dodge was the third-fastest make thanks to Kurt Busch. Seventh-quick Jeff Gordon (30.957 seconds at 174.436 mph) carried the flag for Chevrolet.

The Ford 400 gets underway at 3 p.m. EST on Sunday with live coverage provided by ESPN beginning with a pre-race show at 2 p.m.

 TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE SEASON THUS FAR AND YOUR THOUGHTS COMING INTO THE WEEKEND: “I think there are only two guys that are excited being here, but we are looking to end the season on a good note. Last weekend was a good race for us to come from 30^th to fifth and it is important for our team to end on a good note, weather the No. 14 does or not. It is good for the organization to have two strong running teams at the end of a season and go into our biggest race next year. Weather I get to make it back in here or not we just need to have a good weekend and have some fun.”

YOU ALWAYS HAVE SOME REALLY INTERESTING THINGS THAT YOU DO IN THE OFF SEASON; DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING PLANNED THAT IS GOING TO BE SOMETHING DIFFERENT? “A little bit more hunting than I did last year, our typical snowmobile trip to Utah, some friends we have out there, we stay in a little cabin and run off of a propane generator and a wood stove and rough it for a week, snowmobiling and having fun out there. That is pretty much it, spending time at home, cutting down our Christmas tree as a family and enjoying the holidays.”

CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT IT HAS BEEN LIKE WATCHING TONY STEWART HANDING THE OWNER/DRIVER DUTIES AND BE SO SUCCESSFUL? “I don’t see that side of it, I just see Tony Stewart as a driver, and I don’t see Tony Stewart as the owner handling that part of things. That is one of the things I have always said, I think he does a good job of having the right people do their jobs so that whether he is the owner or not he has the title of the owner, but he had the right people doing that job as far as the ownership goes. He is listed as that, and he is running a company from a responsibility standpoint, he makes the ultimate calls and decisions, but if the other people do their job, then he does not have to be involved as much as some other owners. That helps him be just the driver that he is, I don’t mean just the driver that he is, just that responsibility side of it.”

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS TEAM ORDERS IN NASCAR AND ON SUNDAY IF YOU ARE FIRST AND TONY(STEWART) IS SECOND, AND CARL(EDWARDS) IS THIRD, TONY NEEDS TO WIN, DO YOU LET HIM WIN? “I think there has always been some form of team orders, but my little baby is one year old and I can order her around all I want and it does not mean she is going to listen to me. From my standpoint, it is business as usual, I will do everything I can to help him, I will do whatever I can to not hurt him, but I will not sacrifice for myself, for my team, for the US Army, everybody involved for the fans, I don’t think that is the right way of racing. I don’t think Tony ( Stewart) would see it that way or if the roles were reversed he would expect or I would expect him to do the same thing for me, that is not how we were brought up that is not how we race.”

 BRIAN (FRANCE) WAS JUST IN HERE AND HE SAID THE DRIVERS KNOW WHERE THE LINE IS ON TRACK AND THEY KNOW WHAT THEY CAN AND CANNOT SAY ABOUT THE SPORT, SO THEY WILL NOT BE FINED, DO YOU GUYS KNOW WHERE THE LINE IS ON THE TRACK AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU CAN AND CANNOT SAY ABOUT THE SPORT AT TIMES OF POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS? “There is two parts to that, one part is saying the right things at the right time, and the right place which we are all taught up to do when we were younger but the other part of it is how people are impressed or lack of impressed I guess from what you say at that time or at that place. We have seen it and we know certain people have been recipients of it, but I think it is a good thing that NASCAR manages that, I think it is a good thing that they do it the way they do. It is not anything that is fun to talk about or any part of it that we need to go into any deeper, but it is tough to speak your peace sometimes when you are peace is not what some people want to hear.”

SINCE YOU ARE AN ENGINEER, ELECTRONIC FUEL INJECTION AT DAYTONA, WE JUST HAD A TEST DOWN THERE AND ONE AT TALLADEGA, WHAT DO YOU THINK FROM A PHYSICS STANDPOINT, THEY SHOULD BE DOING WITH THIS THING? “I think the one most important thing that we need to do is keep the cars on the ground, keep them at a certain mile per hour range. Keeping in mind that once they get in a pack of 43 that they are going to be even faster yet, go back to Talladega, we say cars qualifying at 178 mph or 180 mph and they are racing at 200 mph. There is a big discrepancy there between the cars in the pack versus cars by themselves. Ultimately, the fuel injection, I have not tested it at a restrictor plate track yet, I did it at Martinsville, I did it at Charlotte, but from what I have experienced and what I have seen is we are spending a lot of our time on the fuel injection, trying to get them to drive like the carbureted cars, which we have an infinite amount of experience with. Once we can get a better understanding of electronic fuel injection and then apply that to restrictor plates and apply it to make the cars actually drive better. In my opinion we are not educated enough and do not have enough experience with the fuel inject to actually go to a place like that and say yea these are the things that we need to do. I don’t know that there is a significant difference in how a fuel injected engine reacts to restrictor plate versus a carbureted engine, I don’t have that experience to be able to speak on it. Daytona, the most important thing is that we go down there and give the fans the kind of racing that they want. Obviously, that has not been, at least the majority rules, that has not been the tandem style racing, which I typically enjoy more than New York style traffic, grid lock, stuck in the middle of the pack, so we will see what they come up with.”

TONY (STEWART) SAID YESTERDAY THAT “HE WOULD WRECK HIS MOTHER TO WIN THE TITLE” IF YOU ARE FIRST AND HE IS SECOND AND HE CAN GET TO YOUR BUMPER, WOULD YOU EXPECT HIM TO MOVE YOU? “If he needed to yea. I would do the same thing to him, I am racing for a win, and he is racing for a championship. If he has to pass me to win and yea that is part of it. I am not going to pull over for him and like I said, he would not pull over for me. We are not raised that way. Do what you have to do man, in the end he owns my racecar so whatever he wants to do is fair game.”

 THE WAY TONY HAS BEEN APPROACHING THE LAST COUPLE OF RACES, ARE YOU LOOKING AT TONY AND SEEING A MASTER AT WORK HERE WHEN IT COMES TO TRYING TO GET INSIDE CARL ( EDWARDS) HEAD? “I think he is having a lot of fun with it. I think he obviously, he has performed better than I think anybody expected in the “Chase” not just from a win standpoint but just pure leading laps and the cars. They have turned their team around. I think he there is a since of enjoyment there for him on the mental side as much as it is on the physical side of just putting up the numbers. He has a lot of fun doing that. I think the next couple of days are going to be interesting to see how all that stuff plays out. I think and I don’t mean to sound un-biased, but I think it is a pretty equal game right now. I think they are both stabling pretty hard at each other.”

BRIAN, ALSO SAID THAT YOU GUYS DEFINITELY KNOW THE LIMIT ON THE TRACK AND WHERE THE LINE IS AND WHEN YOU GO OVER THE LINE AND WHEN YOU DON’T, I HAVE HEARD A LOT OF DRIVERS SAY THEY DON’T REALLY KNOW WHERE THE LINE IS?

“I would have to say that Brian, I assume you are talking about Brian Vickers? NO BRIAN FRANCE, Brian France ok, well Vickers has had a few issues here the last couple of weeks, so I am just checking. I don’t think it is fair for him to say that we all know the line because I don’t think that line is a black and white line, I think it is obviously got some senses of confusion about it. I am not trying to ruffle anybodies feathers but I don’t think he can say that we all understand because we all don’t understand otherwise we would not have some of these situations or dilemmas and I don’t think people are going to put themselves in a position where they are going to lose their money because of their opinion. Nobody is that dumb in our sport.”

YOU HAVE SOME CHARITY EVENTS COMING UP FOR THE FOUNDATION, HOW IMPORTANT IS THE HOLIDAY SEASON FOR THE RYAN NEWMAN FOUNDATION AND THESE UPCOMING EVENTS? “ That is one of the tough things about our schedule is we only have so much time to do some of the things that we love. Our fishing tournament on December 10^th and our foundation dinner on December 9^th, the night before is something that we have purposely planned to be in the off season so that we can dedicate the time and our resources to be able to have some fun and do that. Raising money for the animals and doing the things that we do, Bass Pro Shops has been a great partner for us, giving away, I should not say giving away, the winner receives a Nitro Z9 boat for our fishing tournament, so some amazing things that we do and amazing partners that we have with the Ryan Newman Foundation, to do the things that we do raise the money that we raise as well as the awareness which is sometimes more important than the money.”

 YOU MENTIONED EARLIER THAT YOU CAN ORDER YOUR DAUGHTER AROUND AND SHE MIGHT NOW LISTEN. IF YOU PUT YOURSELF IN THE ROLE OF YOUR DAUGHTER AND NASCAR IN THE ROLE OF YOU, WITH BRIAN FRANCE SAYING THEY DO NOT WANT THE DRIVERS TO SAY NEGATIVE THINGS ABOUT THE DIRECTION OF THE SPORT, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, HOW HAS THAT CHANGED HOW YOU ADDRESS THINGS? “If I could get NASCAR to change my diapers it would be an amazing thing. (Laughs) In all seriousness, like I said it is tough. Sometimes you get blindsided by those things and my point was, it is subjective, it is a matter of some ones opinion and what I say, what I understand in my mind, but the way you take it or want to take it, can be taken a different way and it all depends on your mood, it all depends on the listeners mood, and what their perspective is. If they have a negative impression of you or of the race or whatever that goes before that and you speak your mind, or you speak your peace, then that is not taken the right way and there is a penalty for that, it is known that there is a penalty for that. Like I said, it is not something that we want to discuss or talk about because it is not good for our sport, but it has to be managed and I think they do a fair job of managing that. Weather it is a certain driver or a certain car owner or certain situation, every cause has an effect and they have to play that judge.

HAVE THERE BEEN TIMES WHERE YOU HAVE HELD BACK ON SOMETHING BECAUSE OF YOUR EXPERIENCE AND WHEN YOU LOOK BACK YOU THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD THING, OR TIMES YOU THOUGHT MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING? “I want to go back to the comment about what Brian (France) said was that we all know that and we don’t all know that line. We know that area, but we do not know that line. Yes there are times and I am sure you can probably talk to every driver out there where they probably wanted to say something at one point and they decided not to. Weather it was a four letter word, weather it was a comment, weather it was a biased opinion of somebody, whatever, that has always happened, and has always happened in the history of all sports, but knowing that line is entirely different than knowing that area of where you crossed that line. I think we have all been in that area, and we all have an idea of where that line is but not everybody has the same understanding of exactly where that line is and that is my point.”

INAUDIBLE: “There are things that I have heard people say, that I have questioned, there are things that I have said that I don’t think should have ever been an issue but they were. Like I said, it is not black and white, it is not cut and dry, it is not that simple period.”

IS THERE ANY RHYME OR REASON AS TO WHY YOUR ROLES HAVE REVERSED, WHY YOUR TEAM HAD A GREAT 26 RACES AND THEN THE ROLE REVERSED AND THE No. 14 CAME OUT STRONG IN THE CHASE? “I am not sure, it has baffled me. You look at our stats, we had the top-fives the top-ten’s going we had everything going for us as far as being one of the guys that should have been there in the “Chase” at least with four or five races to go been in the hunt. We are not, and I think if you look back at it, from my standpoint, we had some struggles. We were the team that should have finished at least third at Chicago but ran out of fuel, and finished eighth. We go into New Hampshire, we back up our qualifying efforts but we did not back up our race efforts from the spring race, I forget if we finished ninth or tenth, whatever it was but our teammate goes out and wins the first two. That performance of the other team did not affect our team but we knew that we were capable of it and we were not following through. Then Dover and Kansas were a struggle for us, Kansas we had a lug nut fall off on a green-flag pit stop, lost two laps, the race went green for a really long time and took us until the last actual caution flag to get back on the lead lap, I think we finished like 18^th or 20^th or something, so we just have not had the performance, going into even into Chicago, we had a loose wheel on the car had to come in, sorry Texas, had a loose wheel on the car and had to come in, lost two laps, the very first pit stop and came back and finally battled back to finish 16^th I think. The 16^th number is not something that we are proud of, but going from 37^th to 16^th is what has been the strength of our team. It is so frustrating for me to have to spend so much time fighting back, when I know our team is capable of so much more.”

KRISTA VODA: Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of the France family and everyone within the NASCAR family, we want to welcome you to the championship contenders press conference.

SHANNON SPAKE: The season started back in February with the Daytona 500. After 35 races at 22 different racetracks in 20 states coast-to-coast, we are down to two outstanding drivers in contention for the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup championship.

KRISTA VODA: If it wasn’t for a little bad luck, this table would be a lot longer with more contenders. It has absolutely been one of the most thrilling Chases I’ve been a part of week in and week out.

SHANNON SPAKE: We can say the eighth edition of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup has been the best yet. Going into Sunday’s finale we have a two-time champion in second place in the standings, only three points back. Welcome the 2002 and 2005 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, Tony Stewart.

KRISTA VODA: The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points leader has followed a blueprint for consistency throughout this stellar season. He had a victory at Las Vegas and 18 top-five finishes, 25 top 10s, both series-leading numbers. Remember that three-point spread we keep talking about, that can all be based on that victory in Las Vegas which, of course, gave him three bonus points going into the Chase. Please welcome Carl Edwards.

SHANNON SPAKE: Now the fun begins. Congratulations for being the two who made it to this point and supplying one of the best championship Chases yet.

Tony, you won the title twice. Only eight drivers have won it three or more times. What would it mean to be in elite company? I would imagine this year would be special knowing you’re the one writing the checks.

TONY STEWART: It’s definitely an awesome opportunity for us. Still very appreciative that Gene Haas for even giving us this opportunity to not only drive for him but be a co-owner with him. At the same time it’s a pretty cool opportunity this weekend to be the other side of the bookend of Jimmie’s dynasty, to be the only guy that could win a NEXTEL Cup championship, a Sprint Cup championship, and a Winston Cup championship, being the first time since Allen Kulwicki as an owner/driver. That would be probably be the best part of it.

SHANNON SPAKE: You said at one point, We don’t deserve to be in the Chase. If you could have imagined being in this chair with one race to go, what would you have said?

TONY STEWART: I wouldn’t have thought that way 10 weeks ago. We had good racecars. We had the performance. We just weren’t getting the results at the end of the day. Some of them were self-inflicted; some of them were circumstances that got us there. We just didn’t have at that time the consistency that you need to run for a championship like this.

So we got off to a great start at Chicago and backed it up at Loudon, then we had our stumbling block, first one of the year in the Chase, with Dover obviously. But coming back and rebounding from the day we had at Martinsville to win that race, then to have the day we had at Texas leading the most laps and winning the race over Carl, those are the things that got us back in this position.

It’s an awesome position to be in. Three points really isn’t a deficit at this point. We go out and win the race, it doesn’t matter what they do on their side, we still control our own destiny.

We have absolutely got nothing to lose and everything to gain. That makes us a dangerous combination for the weekend.

KRISTA VODA: Carl we have heard Tony confident in Victory Lane during this Chase. You said last week you knew there was some potential for some nerves going into this weekend’s race. Where are those now?

CARL EDWARDS: I don’t really have any nerves. We’ve been running well, earned our spot at the top of the standings. I’m excited to have this opportunity to go out and win this championship. We couldn’t feel better about the racetrack. We feel really good about the race.

It’s pretty fun. I’m enjoying it. I’m just looking forward to going out there and racing the car.

KRISTA VODA: Have you practiced anything besides the back flip if you win this championship?

CARL EDWARDS: That’s about all I’ve got. I’ve showed you guys all I’ve got. I don’t know. I just can’t imagine that feeling. I’ve stood there in Victory Lane two out of the last three years and watched Jimmie celebrate and imagined what it would be like to be the champion. That would be spectacular.

KRISTA VODA: We’ll now bring Kerry Tharp back up here to start the question and answer segment.

KERRY THARP: We’ll start with questions for Tony or Carl.

Q. Tony, you were the last driver to win the championship before Jimmie Johnson’s streak. You could be the next driver to win the championship after Jimmie Johnson. Talk about how unique it is you could bookend both of those.

TONY STEWART: You have to win the first one to win the second one to have that opportunity, I guess.

You wouldn’t think you’d take a lot of pride in being the bookends of a dynasty. But it is a pretty cool position to be in, to know that there’s two guys in the last six years that have won championships, and we’re one of them. It would be nice to be the guy that gets on the other side of that obviously.

I rode home with Jimmie on the plane last weekend. Obviously it’s a disappointment to be eliminated from the Chase. It’s like I told him, I think that for him going to Vegas, to the banquet, they have to really hold their heads up high and be very, very proud.

It’s been an honor to watch him do what he’s done, but they need to be proud of what they’ve done the last five years. It’s probably something that will never happen again in the history of our sport. It’s very difficult to win a championship, let alone back-to-back and five in a row like that.

The competition keeps getting tougher and tougher every year. With this Chase format, you can’t make mistakes and have it pay off. To do what they’ve done has been extremely impressive.

Q. Your battle here has been trademark, you guys haven’t really clashed at all, been respectful towards each other. If it came down to the last lap and the only way around the other guy was to do a bump-n-run, would you dare do that, would you race each other clean?

TONY STEWART: I’d wreck my mom to win a championship. I’ll wreck your mom to win a championship (smiling).

I respect him as a driver, but this isn’t about friendships this weekend. This is a war. This is a battle. This is for a national championship. It’s no holds barred this weekend. I didn’t come this far to be one step away from it and let it slip away, so we’re going to go for it.

CARL EDWARDS: Did you say something (smiling)?

TONY STEWART: Yeah, you can come visit my trophy in the room at Vegas when you come out there (smiling).

CARL EDWARDS: He’s got the talking part figured out. Problem is, you haven’t led the points yet this year, have you?

TONY STEWART: They say there’s talkers and doers. I’ve done this twice.

CARL EDWARDS: That’s the funny thing. I’ve listened to you talk a lot today. You’ve talked a lot about your past successes. That is very respectable. And truly, all joking aside, that will make it more fun if we’re able to beat you. It will make me more proud.

But this is going to be a good competition, you guys. Don’t think for a second that either one of us are going to let anything slide. We’re going to go out here, we’re going to race hard, and we’re going for this championship.

I don’t think you could find two harder racers than us up here and we both know that about each other.

Q. Tony, in 2002 and 2005, you had big leads going into the finale. How different a feeling is it and are you possibly more relaxed knowing you’re just three points behind and can just go out and race?

TONY STEWART: It’s been odd. The only part this week that’s concerned me and that I’ve been worried about is the fact that I haven’t been nervous about it. In 2002, 2005, we had big leads, but still you were nervous about it because you knew it could get away. I guess the fact we didn’t think we would even be in the Chase to begin with, it’s taken a lot of that pressure off.

We’re not trying to overcome a big deficit. We’re right there right behind him. For us, like I said, we can finish 43rd this weekend and not be any worse off than we are right now so we don’t have anything to lose. We can throw everything we got at it. If we make a mistake doing it, it doesn’t cost anything. There’s no penalty for us screwing up.

With that does, it takes every ounce of pressure away. We have everything to gain, nothing to lose. Like I said, it’s a dangerous combination to put us in that kind of mode because we’ve been hot lately, we’ve been running good, we’re feeling good, the team is feeling good about everything. You couldn’t ask for a better scenario.

We’ve been in that situation, and when that pressure comes on race day, it’s a little different feeling. Your race always goes a little bit different than what you planned. For us not having that pressure, I think it leads us to have a day like we’ve been having every week the last three or four weeks.

Q. Carl, NASCAR’s new points system has truly generated some big-time excitement here at Homestead. You guys are working the championship a little differently, Carl with consistency, Tony with wins. Carl, you said you felt like the system made you focus on not having a bad race more so than winning. Do you still feel that way?

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah. I mean, obviously we’re leading the points. We haven’t won one. Tony has won four of these in the Chase. There’s different approaches you can take to it.

To be clear, we’ve not gone out and said, Hey, we’re not going to try to win this race, we’re going to cruise along. We’ve done our very best. For us, that’s one of the things I’ve most proud of. We’ve performed very well even on the days when things didn’t stack up in our favor. We had some pretty big hills we had to climb.

I feel whatever points system you’ve got, over time you’re going to have close battles, you’re going to have some that aren’t so close. I think all of us are fortunate that it’s close this year, it’s exciting. It’s fun to be a part of something like this.

TONY STEWART: The thing that I’ve been asked a lot about this week and even last week is, they’re like, How can their points system be good if the guy that’s won four races is behind a guy that hasn’t won any races?

The points system is good. It’s easy to look at that and say that it’s not good because of that fact. But what you got to understand is that, unlike other sports where it’s two teams against each other, it’s 43 teams, it’s a 10-race Chase. You accumulate points for 10 races.

The fact we’ve won four races doesn’t mean we should be ahead of Carl. We did not do our job in some of the other races. That got us behind. Because of the new system, having the bonus points for winning, we were able to catch up and gain those points back.

I think it’s proven to be a pretty good system so far. You have two guys within three points of each other going into the last race. I don’t know how you can say it’s bad.

Q. Carl, how important would it be for you to win the championship and be able to bring that trophy back home to all the folks that have helped you get to this point in time, Kenny Schrader, all your friends in Columbia?

CARL EDWARDS: I’m grateful to all of them every day I get to get in these racecars. So many people took a chance on me. Everybody has a story like that. All of us got here with a lot of help from a lot of different people. It would mean a lot to me. It would be huge.

I’m wise enough to know that my performance on the racetrack doesn’t define me as a man. It’s how I am as a person and the way I am to my family, my friends. When I put that helmet on, go out, do the best I can, the people that are behind me are going to be proud no matter the outcome. It would be really nice to bring that trophy home to Columbia, Missouri. That would be huge.

Q. You guys have put on a pretty remarkable show, particularly over the last couple races. What have you learned about each other through this process and how much respect have you gained for each other throughout the process of competing in this Chase?

TONY STEWART: I don’t think the Chase has changed my level of respect for him. I’ve always respected him as a driver and a person. So the fact that you’re racing around him doesn’t change that because that’s what you do every week.

I don’t know that we’ve really learned anything about each other than the fact that we both know we have to be on our game. We’ve forced each other to take what would be a good day and you have to make it great to succeed.

We had Texas where we ran 1-2, the last week where we ran second and third. We’re keeping each other honest, in my opinion. It’s fun to have a championship race like that. You’re not worried about saying, Well, is this guy going to be able to recover? We’re forcing each other to both have good days.

CARL EDWARDS: I can echo that. It’s pretty neat to go out there and push each other to raise our level of performance. It’s been pretty interesting how it’s worked out. We’ve both been very fast the last couple of races, being able to race one another, race for the wins. That’s as good as it gets.

I think Tony said it best after Texas. He said, This is what it’s about. It feels like a battle at your Saturday night dirt track. These are the kind of points battles that I grew up watching. It’s kind of neat to be a part of it.

Q. Carl, Tony said here a few times he has nothing to lose. Are you buying that? The trophy is right behind him.

CARL EDWARDS: I’m not really buying it. I mean, he does have two trophies already at home. That’s a huge accomplishment. But I believe that Tony as an owner and as a competitor, I mean, if you’re asking me to believe that he doesn’t go to bed thinking, Man, I want to win this thing as bad as anyone, I don’t believe that.

I think for me it would be maybe a bigger accomplishment just because I do not have a championship in the Sprint Cup Series. But I think we’re both competitors, we both have that same desire to win, that same amount of pressure that comes with that, just to go out and perform.

Bad thing for both of us, the good thing for both of us at the same time, is we both seem to be able to go perform under that pressure.

I truly believe this could come down to who wins this race is going to win this championship.

Q. He said that he thinks having won a championship is an advantage. He won’t say what that advantage is. He said he’d say after the championship is over. What do you think that advantage is?

CARL EDWARDS: You’re asking me what I think?

Q. He won’t tell us – not now anyway. Will you tell us, Tony?

TONY STEWART: (Shaking head.)

Q. What do you think the advantage of having won championships is going into this race?

CARL EDWARDS: I don’t know any part of that trophy that makes a car faster this Sunday. To me it’s about going out and performing this Sunday. We’ll just see what happens.

When this thing is over, it’s like Tony said outside when we were talking with Darrell Waltrip, whoever wins, the other guy is going to be the first one to go up and shake his hand and say, Good job. That doesn’t mean we’re happy about it. But we’re going to see what happens on Sunday.

I feel good about it. We’ve run so well here. Bob is calm and cool. My crew is doing well. I feel like I’ve got good people behind me keeping me focused. We’ll go race.

Q. Carl, last year Denny came in here and he had Harvick on one side and Jimmie on the other. He was so nervous the whole stage was shaking. Kevin and Jimmie just pounced on that and needled him. Tony has been trying to do that to a degree to you for a few weeks. You’ve been able to tune it out, say that you have no nerves. How are you able to shut it all out and not be nervous about this opportunity in front of you?

CARL EDWARDS: There’s a couple reasons that I’m not nervous about this, and they’re personal reasons, they’re reasons that maybe someday I’ll talk to you more about in-depth.

I’m truly just excited about this. And it is interesting to me. I’ve learned a lot about Tony, the way he competes by what he’s said. I’ve paid attention to what he says. I pay attention to the way he looks when he gets out of the racecar, the body language he uses, things like that. I’ve learned a lot.

I don’t think he’s going to be any weaker of a competitor because of the things I’ve seen. I think he’s as good as they get and I’m going to have to go out there and do the best I can to be good enough to beat him.

I’m not afraid to admit right here in front of the world and everybody, I’m going to be proud because of how good of a racecar driver he is and the champion that he is, I’m going to be more proud to be able to beat him if that’s what happens.

Q. Tony, a week earlier you had said that you had Carl on the ropes. Do you still feel that way? How evenly matched are these teams and two of you as drivers?

TONY STEWART: Yeah, I feel that way. Like I said, whether Ron Jeremy down here believes us or not, we don’t have anything to lose. I mean, we literally don’t. There’s nothing that we can lose this weekend no matter what happens on the racetrack. We just don’t have anything to lose.

So I think when you got a guy that has something to lose, has a little to lose, then you got to worry about that a little bit. But when you’re a guy that has nowhere to go but up, you’re in that same situation and you race the way you always do. I think that makes you potent.

Q. Tony, everybody says there are no team orders out there. We all expect heavily there are. You have a lot of Ford drivers that are out there. You have Ryan, the Hendrick drivers. Any discussions the last week or so to let you guys have positions, let you have a win, anything like that? Do you want it to come down to that?

TONY STEWART: I don’t want it to come down to that. I feel like we can beat him heads up. We’ve raced for this position heads up and I think that’s the way it should end. It shouldn’t be about team orders.

We saw a hint of it last week. The 16 car picked a pit right in front of us. We never had an issue with it. But you know that that can happen.

Like we say, we’re racing for a national championship, so we are prepared that if something develops along that line, we have a countermeasure for the same thing.

But, no, nobody’s planning that way. You want to win this thing straight up. You want to win it because you did a better job than he did, not because somebody else got involved in the equation. That will take away from it.

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, I feel the same way about it. We want to win because we deserve to win this thing. That’s that.

Q. Carl, in ’08 you won nine races, finished second to Jimmie. Felt like the next year you were going to pick up where you left off. Can you talk about the interim between then and now just to get in position to win one of these and does it make you not want to lose this chance because you’ve been on the cusp of it before?

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, I think both of us realize we just watched five years go by since anyone else has won a championship. I talked to you guys a little bit about that in Phoenix. 2005, it slipped through my fingers. I thought, No big deal, we’ll just do it next year. Then I realize, Man, it’s a lot tougher than that. 2008, I think I held on a little too tightly, maybe was a little too aggressive. But I felt like 2009 was going to be our year again.

To be here three years later, I think I’ve realized that even driving the Ford for Jack Roush, having the best team I can have behind me, it’s still an opportunity that only comes up every once in a while and you have to make the most of it.

Q. Carl, you just mentioned you believe this could come down to whoever wins the race wins the championship. NASCAR hasn’t had a champion win its finale in 13 years. In both cases, if you win Sunday you win the title. With all the talk about winning lately, what would it mean to you personally and to NASCAR if that happens?

CARL EDWARDS: To me it would be the coolest thing in the world if we drove into turn three side-by-side, battled through the corner, one of us won by a bumper. It would just be better if I won. It would be good if it came down to that.

To me I could not be personally more proud of winning a championship that way. That’s something you dream about. Like I said, I think it could come down to that. I think that’s just neat as can be.

TONY STEWART: Yeah, I agree. It takes all the question of adding points, worrying about tiebreakers, this and that out of the equation when the fans can watch the guy that wins the race win the championship at the same time.

This is probably the best chance of having a championship decided with a win that you’ve ever had.

Q. Carl, you have a lot of obligations this week with your Ford obligations, you have the Nationwide. How does that play into what you’ve got with the job at hand on Sunday?

CARL EDWARDS: I don’t have a lot of obligations this week because of this situation. Ford, they’ve been an unbelievable partner to work with. They understand what I need to do is go do what I’ve been doing for the whole Chase. My sponsors, Aflac, Fastenal, Mike Beam, my crew chief on the Nationwide side, everyone understands that the Cup race is our number one focus. We just go do things like we’ve been doing them. I don’t have anything extra on my schedule this weekend.

Q. Tony, have you talked to Foyt in the last couple weeks? If so, what did he say? Did he have any observations about the smack talk going on, whether it works or not? Also have you talked to Darrell Waltrip, the all-time master of smack talk, on whether he thinks it will work for you or not?

TONY STEWART: Foyt has how many championships and wins? How many has Waltrip got? I think they work.

No, I’ve not talked to Foyt. He’ll call me after we win on Sunday. We did speak to Darrell earlier. We both had a pretty good interview with him. It was fun.

It’s like Carl says, it’s like Kid Rock said: It’s not cocky if you back it up. I think we’ve been backing it up the last three weeks. It’s what our intention is.

Q. Carl, can you talk about how you added stability to your life since you ran for the last championship. You have a family now, that good base behind you. How does that help you stay focused, knowing particularly that your crew chief is going to be back next year? You have all kinds of stability surrounding you going for the championship.

CARL EDWARDS: Yeah, I feel like we started this season at Phoenix last year, when things started clicking, going well. We were able to knock off the two wins at the end of last season. I believe that’s the result of a lot of what you just talked about. I’m very fortunate. Things are going real well, not just professionally but personally. I’ve got the most supportive group I’ve ever had in my life around me.

When I go to bed at night, I don’t worry about sponsors, I don’t worry about women, I don’t worry about money, I don’t worry about anything but going as fast as I can go. I just go out there and race.

For me, I’ve done it the other way, too. This works a lot better for me personally (laughter). It’s been good. It is nice to know next year, Bob and I, we talked about it a little bit, no matter what, he’s my crew chief next year and we’re going to pick this up where we left off. Win, lose or draw, I think we’re going to be tough to beat for a few years to come.

KERRY THARP: That concludes the formal Q&A with our two championship contenders in the Sprint Cup Series.

Let’s bring back Shannon Spake and Krista Voda.

SHANNON SPAKE: After 10,000 laps and 13,000 plus miles it all ends in Victory Lane Sunday night. We thank you for your attendance.

That’s because Stewart, the open-wheel phenom who came to NASCAR as a four-time USAC champion and the 1997 IZOD IndyCar Series champion, is on the cusp of earning his third NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title. And he’s doing it in a fashion no one thought possible – as a driver/owner.

Stewart, who left the comfy confines of Joe Gibbs Racing where he spent a decade in Sprint Cup and won championships in 2002 and 2005, struck out on his own in 2009 to form Stewart-Haas Racing with entrepreneur Gene Haas, founder of Haas Automation – the largest machine tool manufacturer in the western world. What people thought was crazy three years ago – a driver in the prime of his career taking on the dual responsibility of team ownership – has morphed into the closest championship battle in modern history, with Stewart providing the kind of drama NASCAR CEO and Chairman Brian France envisioned when he announced tweaks to the series’ point structure back in January.

A “Game 7 moment” is how France described his desired season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Well, here we are, with an all-or-nothing race on the docket come Sunday’s Ford 400.

Thanks to a hot streak by Stewart, who has won four of the nine races in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, he trails Chase leader Carl Edwards by only three points heading into Homestead.

Only one finish guarantees either driver the championship – a win. If Stewart and Edwards are tied in points at the end of the Ford 400, Stewart earns the championship via the tie-breaker of best finishes, as Stewart’s four victories trump Edwards’ one. This is the closest margin between first- and second-place going into the final race in Chase history, and the third-closest since the inception of the position-based points structure in 1975.

In Stewart vs. Edwards, it’s the Everyman vs. the Cover man, Chevy vs. Ford, grit vs. suave, stubble vs. polished.

Stewart, already a two-time Sprint Cup champion who knows what this weekend is all about, comes into Round No. 36 of 36 poised and confident, despite the three-point margin Edwards has over him.

Perhaps it’s because Stewart has lopped 16 points of Edwards’ once sizeable lead in the last four races. Perhaps it’s because even before coming to Sprint Cup, Stewart had won nine other driving titles. Perhaps it’s because Stewart has 43 career Sprint Cup wins, two of which have come at the 1.5-mile Homestead oval.

No matter, Stewart knows what has to be done and is keenly aware of the stakes. That the driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing could become the first driver/owner to win a Sprint Cup title since the late Alan Kulwicki in 1992 is simply added intrigue.

Stewart, after all, is a company man. And in Sunday’s season finale at Homestead, he plans to deliver.

TONY STEWART, Driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevrolet Impala for Stewart-Haas Racing:

This battle between you and Edwards is pretty impressive.
“It shows what this Chase is about. It’s a good battle right now. If you’re Brian France (NASCAR CEO and Chairman) right now, I would say he’s giddy. If not, he should be because this is the perfect scenario. It’s the perfect storm, so to speak, going into this last race. That’s what you want. This is about as exciting as it gets – to have two guys who are down to three points with one race to go.

“We’ve both had to fight and fight and fight to get every point we can get up to this point. I think it makes it more gratifying, the results, at the end of the day. I feel like I’m working toward something and I feel like if we accomplish this, we have worked for it, not had it handed to us, not had it given to us. That’s all you can ask for as a driver, is to be in that position.

“I think it’s pretty honorable to be in that situation right now. It’s an awesome championship battle. So, I don’t know how you could ask for more than what we got.”

How much is the experience of having already won two Sprint Cup championships playing into your hands now?
“It’s definitely an advantage, but I’m not going to tell you why because that’s what I’m going to take to Homestead with me. We win this thing, I’ll tell you what the advantage is and why, but not until then.”

You’ve been in two Sprint Cup championship runs before and won both of them. Is this one the most fun?
“I think so. The good thing is we’ve been in this position a lot of times. This isn’t the first time we’ve been in this deal. We have that ability. I didn’t think we belonged in the Chase to start with. I didn’t think we were a factor. What do we have to lose? We don’t have anything to lose. I don’t care about second or third in the points. After you’ve won it, second doesn’t really matter. To me, it’s about going out, getting that championship, doing everything you can to accomplish that goal. We’re not a group that’s going to sit here and say, ‘We’ll take the easy road and settle for second.’ I’d rather finish sixth or seventh in points knowing that we did everything we can to win.”

Can you handicap yourself going into Homestead? How do you and Edwards stack up?
“I think we both have momentum. We both had two really good weeks in a row. I still think our mile-and-a-half program has come a long way this summer. You look at how we ran at Chicago, Kentucky, Charlotte and Texas – we’ve been good on the mile-and-a-halves. I’m excited about it.

“I like Homestead. It’s a place that we had a lot of success when it was flat. We haven’t gotten that win with it banked. I like the way that track races right now. I’m pretty excited about it.

“I don’t know where to handicap it. Doesn’t matter to me. It’s just about getting four more points than he does. That’s all that matters.”

Explain a lap around Homestead.
“You go off into turn one, and when you get into the banking, you lift. If your car is good, you can go and not use any brake, or very, very little brake. You stay one lane off the bottom, past the transition – it’s a little less banking on the lower level toward the apron – so you stay one level above that. As soon as your car settles in you can really just mash right back in the gas and just ride that second level around down onto the backstretch. And then you do exactly the same thing going into turn three. A lot of times in turn three, because of the wind direction there, you can actually go into the corner a lot harder and a lot further, actually turning into the corner before you get off the gas. And it’s the same thing, once that car settles in, you get on the gas and ride it around to the frontstretch. It’s a pretty smooth racetrack.”

With the championship battle between you and Edwards, it means Jimmie Johnson’s run of Sprint Cup titles ends at five. What are your thoughts on his run?
“I think it’s been absolutely remarkable to begin with for Jimmie to put five in a row together. I know this year hasn’t ended up the way he’s wanted, by any means. I think he goes to Vegas (for the season-ending awards banquet) and holds his head up high knowing what they’ve accomplished – the fact that there’s a really good possibility in the history of the sport for eternity that it could never happen again.

“The competition gets tighter and tighter, tougher and tougher. I just think it’s amazing. You understand why people didn’t want him to win a sixth one. At the same time, I’ve said it from day one, how do you knock down a guy that’s going out and doing what he’s supposed to do? If we could trade places with him, we’d do it in a heartbeat, go out and win five in a row.

“I think you’ve got to tip your hat to him. I think that’s something in NASCAR history that I would put my money on that it will never happen again. I just think it’s remarkable at this level to do what he’s done, what that team’s done. I know this year hasn’t ended the way they wanted, but I still think they have to have a lot of pride in knowing they’ve done something in the history of the sport that most likely will never be duplicated.”

TONY STEWART’S HOMESTEAD PERFORMANCE PROFILE

× Race length extended due to green-white-checkered finish.

Heading into the finale at the South Florida track, Newman’s season record includes: one win, nine top-fives and 17 top-10s.

The last time he scored more top-fives was in 2004 (11) and the last time with more top-10s was in 2003 (22).

In his first two seasons driving for Stewart-Haas Racing, Newman posted five top-fives and 15 top-10s in 2009 and four top-fives and 14 top-10s in 2010.

“From many standpoints it’s been a strong season for our No. 39 team,” said Newman, who will be completing his 10th season as a Sprint Cup regular. “We’ve been more consistent and did some things we haven’t done in the past like putting the Army Chevrolet in Victory Lane. The downside of the season has been our Chase results. We truly expected to be a contender when the Chase began in Chicago.”

Newman has scored four top-10s during the first nine Chase races, including an impressive come-from-behind fifth-place result in Sunday’s event at Phoenix.

“If we can end the season with a performance like we had in Phoenix it would make things that much better for our U.S. Army team during the offseason,” noted Newman. “You always want to end the season with a feel-good performance and we also want to make our Army Strong Soldiers proud of their team.”

Newman would be the first to admit that he hasn’t fared that well at the Homestead high-banked 1.5-mile oval. In nine Cup starts at Homestead, he has three top-10s and an average finish of 19.11.

“The good news about Homestead is that one of my highest finishes (7th) came at last year’s race,” explained Newman. “We stepped up our mile-and-a-half program this year and aim to have another good showing on Sunday.”

Before the Chase began Newman said that it was going to take an average finish of 7.0 or better in the 10 Chase races to win the championship. His average is 17 while the averages of the two contenders Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart are 5.22 and 6.89 respectively.

“We just had too many issues and a streak of bad luck during the Chase,” said Newman. “But there’s a lot of buzz at our Stewart-Haas Racing shop about Tony (Stewart) and the No. 14 team. The spirit is high, knowing that Tony has a shot at winning the Sprint Cup championship. The (No. 14) team has done a remarkable job in the Chase and the battle between Tony and Carl (Edwards) is great for the sport. I know I’m excited about it and I am sure the fans feel the same way.”

Newman gained three positions in the driver point standings — from 12th to ninth — following his fifth-place finish in Phoenix. He is actually tied for eighth in points with Kurt Busch, but Busch wins the tiebreaker.

Darian welcome and why don’t you talk about your thoughts and strategies on winning the championship this weekend at Homestead Miami Speedway?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Thanks for having me on.  Just trying to do the same thing we’ve been doing the last half of the season.  Just going out there for maximum points.  We know if we win the race, that’s our goal.  We can’t finish any worse than second.  That’s what we do.  We go out there for the win.

Q.  Darian, you had a good run last year even though Tony’s history there has been kind of hit and miss since they reconfigured the track.  Where do you go for your baseline setting there?

DARIAN GRUBB:  It’s a good thing for us that we did run good there last year because that is a very similar set-up to what we’ve run good at with the mile and a halves this year.  We’ve hit on that set-up last year.  We’ve been doing it ever since.

We felt like we should be faster.  We felt like we had a definite Top 5 car.  We feel like it’s worked out this year at Vegas, and all the tracks that are fairly similar where we feel we can take a lot of that data over to Homestead and have a good year.

Q.  Given how close Tony and Carl are at this point, can you tell me what kind of pressure is on a crew chief at this point to really hit the set-up, given even a couple of positions can cost either driver here?

DARIAN GRUBB:  It’s about the same as it is every other week, honestly.  We want to go out there and have the best set-up we possibly can have, and also have the adaptability to it where if something goes different with the track condition we have to be able to adjust to those changes as the race goes on.  Make sure the car was fast enough all day long regardless of the situation we’re put in.

We go down there like we do week to shoot to be the fastest car off the truck, fastest car in qualifying, and fastest car in the race.  The pressure is the same.  This week there is a little more on the line, but the majority of that we just put on the driver’s shoulders because we still do the same job in the pits every week.

Q.  I asked the same thing of Bob.  It’s just a back grounder question.  But you have a mechanical engineering degree from Virginia Tech, I read.  When you were studying for that, was your career plan toward NASCAR or in a different direction?  If it was in a different direction, how did you veer into what you’re doing now?

DARIAN GRUBB:  That’s pretty funny.  I’m just very happy working with anything mechanical.  I worked in my dad’s construction company growing up and have a mechanical mind.  I took all my toys apart, destroyed them and put them back together all those things.  That’s how I got into the mechanical engineering kind of thing.

Racing, was kind of a byproduct of that.  I just had a lot of friends that were involved in Friday and Saturday night shows around home and I got involved in that.  I was doing it as a hobby all the time on weekends.  Leaving classes early to make sure I could make it to the tracks in Florida if that’s where we were running that weekend and things like that.

I put my resume on the internet and got a job doing my hobby as a full-time job.  I can’t ask for anything better than that.  I was paying my own way and doing everything for it, and now I get to do the best thing in the world having a job as a hobby.  So it’s pretty cool.

Q.  What was your first job out of college?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Product design engineer with a heavy trucking industry.  I designed aerodynamic devices and stuff for Volvo trucks.  The big rigs you see on the highway.

Q.  What did you most bring from the Hendrick operation over to Tony’s?

DARIAN GRUBB:  I would say probably just the mentality of empowering the people around you to do the best they can do from the positions.  Mr. Hendrick has instilled that in the organization.

Probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned from him is making sure the people around you are strong enough to do what you want to do so you don’t take all that load yourself.  Jeff Meendering and Jonathan and Scott, and all the guys we have here on the team do a great job taking their workload, and me not having to babysit all the time.  They do a great job of getting the job done.  I’m able to concentrate on what I need to concentrate on to be a good crew chief.

Q.  I saw you on NASCAR Now on Sunday morning, and I thought you said something interesting.  You were talking about how Stewart-Haas, the cars have been good for some time now.  Then you said the driver is now up on the wheel.  So has something changed with Tony over the last nine weeks in the way he’s driving or the way he’s attacking races?

DARIAN GRUBB:  I really think it has.  I think it’s now more that we are in the Chase, we are in contention, and just that little extra fire is there in every person on the team.  Everybody’s trying that extra 10% to make sure everything we do is topnotch.

We try to do that every week, but now that everything is on the line the last ten weeks, that it’s a little bit easier to know what your goal is.  You’re always wanting to run good, but now we know the championship is the end goal, and it’s within our reach.  So that extra little bit of fire and desire is what you’re seeing on the racetrack.

Q.  There’s been so much speculation about the team.  You guys have been without a competition director for half of the year.  Are you going to be back with Stewart-Haas next year?

DARIAN GRUBB:  We’ll leave that to after Sunday and figure out what’s going to happen there.  Our goal is to win the championship and we’ll decide everything else after that.

Q.  Along those same lines, has it been difficult at all to work through the last few months with all the rumors and uncertainty and not knowing necessarily who is going to be in what position where next year?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Definitely not.  We’ve still got the same goals we’ve always had that we want to go out and win the championship.  Winning races is the way to do that.  What we’ve done the last nine weeks, we’ve shown that we have the capability to do that.  We’re almost 50-50 on that, so hopefully we can continue that streak and get it to be a 50% deal and win at Homestead.

Q.  Is there anything – have you guys found a better set-up with this new tire the last couple of months?  Or is there something – I mean, have you found or just hit on something that you feel has caused this kind of turnaround?

DARIAN GRUBB:  I really don’t think so.  There are tracks that we’ve had new tires and tracks that we’ve had the same tires.  A lot of it is continuing to build on that notebook that we’ve been building for three years now.  We’ve gotten better at some tracks and gotten worse at some tracks with the things we’re trying.

A lot of things just stacked up to where we’ve had the good data we’ve needed to have for the last ten races and being able to apply that to the racetrack.  Everybody’s just digging in a little deeper and working a little bit harder trying to find whatever’s left out there for performance.

The competition level is so high that you have to be on top of the game.  You can’t settle on what you’re doing before and think you’re going to be competitive.  You have to progress every week.

Q.  I think I’ve sort of asked one of my questions.  I haven’t been able to figure out a specific thing that turned it from you at the time Tony was complaining in Michigan to the start of the chase.  So there is nothing specific you can point to in that time period that turned it this season?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Definitely not.  We haven’t changed anything in the game plan and they way we’ve been approaching every week.  We’ve been doing the same job since the start of the season.

We’ve had chances to win at least four out of the first five races, and it always still kind of gets on my nerves looking back and seeing how we didn’t win in Vegas.  That was the one win Carl got.  Those are the three points he came into the Chase as a bonus over us, so that is the gap right now.  That is the definite six-point turn around.  We would have had three, and he would have lost three at that point.

Everybody has those what-ifs all the way during the season.  So we’ve had fast cars, and we’ve had chances to win races that we didn’t capitalize on.  Now all those things seem to keep rolling our direction now that we seem to not have the bad luck and the issues that we’ve had mid-season.  So now we’ll try to keep that momentum and that ball rolling.

Q.  One other thing I was wondering about is this a sign that Hendrick equipment is still sort of the dominant equipment – that Hendrick equipment is still the best in the garage?

DARIAN GRUBB:  I have to think so.  That’s what I’m used to and familiar with.  So we were able to perform year-in and year-out with what we do.  With what Mark Whitman and the guys in the chassis shop do and Jeff Andrews the guys in the engine shop.  I don’t think we’re lacking for anything.  We’re able to go out there and compete with the best of the best every weekend.  90% of the time we’re able to come out on top.  I feel like we’re definitely not lacking anything there.

But I think the competition level has definitely stepped up between all the programs.  It’s a definite battle every week.  You’re going to see the strengths of every organization every week, and we just hope we can capitalize on it when the time comes.

Q.  I know you’ve talked about this some in the past but could you talk about winning the Daytona 500 with Jimmie and 2006 and that whole experience of jumping in with him and how that may compare with what a championship might mean to you in this role?

DARIAN GRUBB:  That was really cool being able to step in that week.  That was a team that I had been with for several years at that point and got a lot of friends.  It was a friends and family atmosphere, much similar to what I’m in right now with the guys I’ve surrounded myself with here at Stewart-Haas Racing.  To where if you can go out there and pull off the win at the Daytona 500 against the obstacles and now we’re trying to pull off this championship against the obstacle of competing against that 99 team, if we can do that, it makes it that much sweeter because the people around you are the people that helped get you here and helped actually build the team into what it is today.

It’s very similar in that aspect, and it’s much cooler knowing if we can pull this thing off, we did it as a team effort.

Q.  Could you speak to the dynamics of working for Tony as an owner as well as having to balance the driver-crew chief relationship with them?

DARIAN GRUBB:  It’s definitely got its ups and downs with that, because Tony does a really good job at separating the two on Monday through Thursday.  He puts the owner hat on and does what he has to do to try to help run the organization and those things.

When Friday through Sunday comes along, we get to the racetrack, and he switches into driver mode.  He works for me at that point, and we do a really good job separating the two to where we get to the racetrack, and we have a common goal.  We run towards that every week.

Q.  Darian, now that it’s down to the two of you guys for the championship, when you sit on the box and decide on pit calls, is it easier because all you need to do is focus on the 99, or is it more challenging because you’re still focused on winning and everybody could be doing all sorts of other things out there?

DARIAN GRUBB:  I’d say it’s more of the latter there.  We planned to go down there and do everything we can do to win the race.  We are, of course, competing against the 99 for the championship, but regardless of what else happens out there no matter where he finishes, if we can win the race, it’s a guaranteed championship for us.  Even if he finishes second and leads the most laps, we have the tiebreaker at that point with the number of wins.

So knowing that, our goal going down there is to be in front.  That is all that matters.  That matters for all 42 competitors that we’re running against, not just the one.

Other than that it comes down to if we’re running 5th or he’s running 8th, it becomes a matter of position and trying to wonder what the 99 is doing and those things.  But we have nothing to lose.  We’re coming in second.  We can’t finish any worse than second.  All we can do is go out there and shoot for the win.

Q.  That being said, how challenging has this season been?  I’ve had crew chiefs talk about there’s been so many Hail Marys thrown out there and how many risks are being taken by other crew chiefs.  How do you deal with that?  How do you not get sucked into that or how do you be a part of that and play a part of that game?  It seems there are so many different decisions being made out there, especially with the what the tire does.  How does that factor in and how does that play a role in what you decide to do?

DARIAN GRUBB:  It definitely decides that every week.  We always have those options of what you’re going to do and how bold you’re going to be as far as the calls go, but that is the nature of the sport.  The competition level has gotten so close, those calls make the difference now whether you can win or finish 10th.  That seems to pay off at times for certain people but then other weeks it doesn’t.

But thinking back to the first Phoenix race, I came in for a two-tire call and everybody else who did four.  We had a 4-second lead with 27 laps to go, and then the caution came out, And that forced us back in to the guys with four tires ran all over us and we finished seventh.  But we were going to walk away with the race on that one if things had played our way.

You have that every week.  You have those scenarios where you have to play the game.  It’s another one of those where Phoenix I waited for everybody else to pit and made a decision to do fuel only so we could make up time on the racetrack.

It’s a game everybody’s playing.  You sit there and watch the 22 car stayed out, and the two tires and all these things.  That is the topsy-turvy racing.  You see the guys from the back come to the front the way the strategy plays out.  It’s even more of a game and deciding factor every week.

That is part of what makes this job so fun.  Now you can affect the outcome a lot more with the decisions you make, and the calls you make on top of the box with your experience.  It’s just a matter now of making sure you have all the data you need to have to make the correct decisions.

Q.  How much does your stomach churn when you’re waiting to make those calls or making those calls?

DARIAN GRUBB:  A little bit.  It’s almost one of those things that that’s what we live on.  Your stomach doesn’t really churn because it’s on an adrenaline high at that point.  You’re making the call and feel like it’s 100%.  The stomach turns afterwards when it doesn’t work out or something like that.  It’s the heat of the moment.

You have to go with what your gut feeling is and what you think you need to do to try to win the race.  The best finish possible.  Then afterwards is when you have to deal with consequences.

Q.  Could you describe what your relationship is like with Tony?  How would you describe it and how would you say it’s changed or grown over the two years you’ve been working together?

DARIAN GRUBB:  I would say it’s good.  We’ve gotten to be pretty good friends on and off the racetrack.  We’ve spent a lot of time together.  We know each other a little better than we should at times.  We eat, sleep, and live together pretty much half the time at the racetrack, and try to accomplish on the racetrack.

So it’s a tough dynamic, kind of a love-hate brother relationship at times.  When you feel each of you needs to do something, but it’s the best of times when you can go out there and make things work and get on top of the victory stage and take those pictures with the trophy.

Q.  When he hired you, did he explain what he’s looking for?  Because he’s only had a few crew chiefs.  Was he looking for something specific in a personal relationship with a crew chief?

DARIAN GRUBB:  No, not really.  As I said, with me it’s more one of those things that they already had some discussions with what they were going to do.  They were looking more for the comfort level of the Hendrick chassis, and the Hendrick program and what we were doing here.  Needing somebody that knew what was going on with this side of the organization, more so than just a crew chief type or anything. (Indiscernible).

Q.  Kind of following up on that.  What can you take away from your time at Hendrick in terms of the championships won with them and what Tony’s experience has been winning the two to apply to this weekend?

DARIAN GRUBB:  I think a lot of it is just like I said before, just letting the people around you do the job that they know how to do and making sure that everybody does pull their weight and everything else should come into play.  You shouldn’t have to change your game plan to go out there and win a championship.  Because if you have set your team up properly before that, that’s what puts you in contention.  The more you have to change things to try to win it, that’s when you dig yourself a little bit of a hole.  Hopefully we’ve got a championship winning team.

I know I feel like we have that.  All the guys surrounding the 14 team, we’re really looking forward to going out there and trying to get the job done.

Q.  Tony has said over the past few weeks post race that he’s not really feeling pressure right now.  You guys have nothing to lose.  I know you said that yourself during the course of this teleconference.  Do you feel that way?  Do you not feel pressure on this?  Do you not feel like you guys have something to lose?

DARIAN GRUBB:  Not at all.  We can’t finish worse than second.  It’s the best we’ve ever run in the three years we built Stewart-Haas Racing into being a championship contender.  Now it’s about going out there and getting the job done this week.  We’ve got one person that we really have to beat to win the championship.  Other than that, we’re competing against the other 42 competitors like we always do.  We’re trying to go out there and win the race, and that controls our own destiny.

There is really no pressure.  We feel like we’ve already accomplished what we need to accomplish, but bringing the trophy home would definitely put the icing on the cake.

Q.  When you talk about that one person you have to beat.  How focused are you on the 99?  Will you be very aware of what they’re doing on pit stops and all of those other things?  Or do you have to balance that with making sure you guys run your own race?

DARIAN GRUBB:  We’re going to concentrate on running our own race.  We’re going to pay attention to what they’re doing, and they’re going to be paying attention to us.  The more you try to play the game and outrun that guy when ten other guys are going to sneak by you and pull off a Top 10, you’ll be sitting back there trying to figure out how many positions do I need to be in front of him.

We want to go for the win.  That is our goal from the time we unload.  It doesn’t matter what anybody else does at that point.

THE MODERATOR:  Darian, thank you so much for your time today.  We appreciate it, and best of luck this weekend in Miami.

DARIAN GRUBB:  Thank you very much.