Imagine NASCAR 2009 and Tony Stewart the feisty team owner is having problems with Tony Stewart the feisty driver.
What happens?
"It makes it easier to fire yourself if you own part of the team," Stewart says.
Welcome to Stewart's next great adventure. He will live in the spotlight as the image of the new Stewart-Haas team. He will spend his weekends driving as he always has. He will spend his weeks managing as he always wished he could. He'll try to hire good people to handle everything in between.
"When I'm at the track, I'm on the driver's side," he says. "I have to do my portion of the responsibilities of a driver. When we go back to Mondays and Tuesdays and I'm not behind a steering wheel, I'm an owner again."
Juggling that, Stewart says, means using what he learned over the past 10 years at Gibbs Racing.
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"What I've learned is you win races and championships with people. It's not with fancy cars and trick strategies. That's not what happens in the long haul.
"You have to have confidence that you have the right leadership within the organization. You have to trust them so you can focus on doing what you need to do as a driver to be successful."
If you think moving from super successful Gibbs Racing to a struggling Haas/CNC team is costing Stewart sleep, think again.
"Once we made the decision and I said, this is what I'm going to do, the fear was gone. The fear was just making sure I was making the right decision."
Stewart did more than lose the fear. He also lost the pressure that came with deciding what to do, although now he has to worry about building a strong team.
First, however, there's a season to finish and, perhaps, a championship to win.
"I have a great race team at Gibbs," Stewart says. "We've battled a lot of adversity and when your guys don't know what you're going to do, it makes it a little tense. But we've made the most of it.
"I can't say a big weight lifted off my shoulders. It's like you just switched weights. We took one off our shoulders and added another.
"If I wasn't excited about doing this, it would bother me a lot. But I am excited about all the pressure we have. It's something we've been looking forward to."
This weekend's excitement centers on the Allstate at the Brickyard 400. He's the defending champion with two victories in his last three Indianapolis Motor Speedway appearances. He's hoping to break a 33-race winless streak, including all 19 races this season. Still, he ranks 10th in the Chase for the Cup.
"After each time you win there, it makes it easier," he says. "The pressure goes away, but the desire to win there is still there. It makes it easier to focus on what you're trying to do and accomplish, and that's win the race."
