Positive Karma

Tony Stewart is as unbearable when he wins as he is - or used to be - when he loses. During a recent visit to the No. 20 team hauler, Stewart was horsing around with four or five crewmen in the narrow center aisle, demonstrating what he called "state police holds," which then erupted into half-serious wrestling matches.

"You going to do any work today, Blake, or you just going to stand there?" he asked, slightly winded.

"Yeah, we need to get to work on that belly you got," was my reply.

"Why, what's wrong with it?"

"Well, if you're going to go climbing all those fences..."

"I haven't fell off one yet, have I?"

This is Tony Stewart, regular guy, having fun in his comfort zone. All around him say Smoke (the name he's applied to his new line of merchandise) is as relaxed as they've ever seen him.

"For us with Tony, really, what he's been over the years is really focused," team president J.D. Gibbs noted. "When you get around the racetrack, that's when he's had issues. Away from the track, he's been great, always has been.

"He really just has a peace about him. He still has that fire, and we see it. What we see now is just a little more relaxed."

"It's the most relaxed I've seen him in seven years," crew chief and guiding star Greg Zipadelli says. "It's the first time in seven years I've seen that he can enjoy himself and realize what he's capable of and enjoy his accomplishments."

It hasn't always been so, and Stewart's frequent, childish tantrums - including costly run-ins with photographers and press - remain part of Stewart's growing legend. Yet - and we hold our breath - all that seems to be in the past.

"You get tired of being uptight about everything all the time," Tony admits. "A lot of times it's easier to go through the motions instead of standing up for what you think is right and then having to defend yourself the next two or three days, and then for the next two or three weeks you have the backlash of it.

"There's nothing I can do about those previous years. There's nothing I can do to erase it. All I can do is control what happens from this moment forward. I've tried to be a little better with the media and fans, and everybody has kind of noticed that. Still, every week somebody's got something in there about 'Terrible Tony' this or that. Now what am I doing wrong?"

Much was made by the press of Stewart's off-season move back home to Indiana from Charlotte, N.C., and he admits that was a big step - at home, he's "just Tony" again. Stewart actually bought the house he was raised in, in Columbus, Ind., "with the same neighbors I used to hit the baseball through their windows, only older."

(A couple dozen reporters descended on Columbus the week before the Brickyard, producing Tony Stewart hometown profiles.)

Zipadelli saw through to what home has done to put his high-strung driver at ease. "He gets to hang out with people who were friends with him before he got to where he is," the chief says. "That's important. Sometimes you don't know if people want to be friends with you because of who you are. I think it's a big comfort for him."

All of the above may or may not have something to do with Stewart's wonderful late-summer surge, which vaulted him from 10th to first in the point standings and made him, perhaps, the favorite for the fall playoff, which determines the season champion.

Stewart, and the rest of the Joe Gibbs Racing group, had blundered through the first half of the season, with Tony, Bobby Labonte, and then-teammate Jason Leffler unable to find their asses with both hands. Stewart was 10th in points after a difficult 29th-place at Pocono in June.

Almost suddenly, the campaign spun entirely the other way, beginning with a stout second place at Michigan, where Stewart led 97 of the 200 laps. It was as if the team had broken through the clouds and was in high, clear air.

"The weekend we had at Michigan was huge, running second there," Stewart says. "That was something that we finally kind of broke into that category [midsize aero tracks] and interrupted the Hendrick and Roush dominance there that day."

Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Racing dominated the first half of the season, winning all but two of the 15 races.

Stewart followed with his first victory of the season, on the road course at Sonoma, California, then overpowered the field next time out at Daytona, winning from the pole. The Daytona victory was gratifying, coming as it did at a track where Tony has run well but has earned no more than a handful of frustration. It was here he commenced his Castroneves fence-climbing victory stunt.

Next came a fair-enough fifth place at Joliet, Illinois, confirming Stewart's confidence on the aero tracks. A victory on the flat track at Loudon, N.H. (he led 232 of the 300 laps) made it three from four, and seventh place at Pocono redux in July built momentum toward the big prize - the Allstate/Brickyard main event at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Stewart, of course, had raced in five Indy 500s - close at times but never quite - and in six prior Brickyards. The ancient Speedway had been site and stage for some of his most tempestuous moments, as win after win slipped through his fingers.

"You dream about something for so long you become consumed by it," Stewart admitted in the glow after his Brickyard victory on August 7. "I worked in that area. I drove a tow truck for a guy I raced sprint cars against, and I'd drive down 16th Street and wonder what it would be like to be 300 feet to the left running 200mph. I got a chance to do that.

"Finally, I get to feel what it feels like, see what the view is of coming down that front straightaway, seeing those checkered flags as the first driver to go under vs. the third or fourth driver."

This was huge. This is why a racer races, and only those who fulfill the dream know the feeling.

"This is one of those days, and I don't want it to end," he added. "I don't want to see the sun set."

The victory also boosted Stewart to the lead in points, completing the rocket shot that commenced at Michigan in June.

Zipadelli, head down as always, kept the ballast in the keel. He shared in Tony's moment of glory.

"We've had some pretty good rolls and some good seasons, but right now, this is an all- time high," Zippy said.

He tempered that, though, with, "I can't find time to get wrapped up in it. I mean, right now, I'm thinking about what we're going to do to go to the Glen."

And yes, as if to confirm the team's (and Tony's) week-to-week method, Stewart scored an almost effortless victory the next week at the Watkins Glen course. He followed that with fifth place at Michigan and a commendable eighth at the Bristol half-mile.

The summary? In the 10 races since Michigan in June, Stewart has pretty much run the table, finishing no lower than eighth, winning five times in seven tries, and joy-hopping from 10th in points to an almost certain lead heading into the playoff, which begins at New Hampshire Sept. 18.

Many competitors remain ambivalent about the playoff, formulated by Brian France and his TV "partners" in part to draw a bit of the fall spotlight from the NFL and the baseball playoffs. Publicly, yes, it's a good thing, it's good for "our" sport. Privately, they'd rather see the season championship decided by a season's worth of effort, and they don't like seeing a leader penalized by the artificial shake-up required after Richmond.

(You know how it works. The top 10 in points, or all those within 400 points, are gathered into a lump, each spaced five points apart. That's good for the 10th-place guy - who late in the game was Jeff Gordon, 611 behind Stewart - but not good for Tony, who had a 213-point lead after Bristol.)

Stewart, honestly, seems not to care. It's what's next. You prepare for it, and you go do it.

"We're just looking at what we have to do," he insists. "We have one more two-day test left which we're going to save for Homestead [last race of season]. The hard thing is when you've got a new [car] rules package like this it makes you want to use them at the beginning of the year. At the same time, you want to save those tests for later in the year when the tracks are a little warmer."

"We've got a long way to go," Zipadelli admits. "The part I'm excited about is that we've been running good at tracks with cars not as good as we have coming, which doesn't mean anything, but we feel like we've gotten a handle on what we wanted, and this race team has been working hard building new cars for us.

"Aero-wise, they're better than what we've had. They're lighter. Everybody is paying a little more attention to detail. To me, that's exciting to know we're getting as good or better stuff than we had at the beginning of the year."

Stewart knows a bit about race cars, but he knows to stay out of the way of the men with the finer skills.

"You've got to remember, I just drive," he says. "I get in the car and I drive. It's literally that simple. Those are questions you'd have to ask Zippy, because those are technical questions about what they've found at the shop and what we've found in testing. The cars are just driving better - what the reason for that is, I don't know. There's one guy [Zipadelli] who does know, and he's over there working on it right now."

So, Stewart, do you feel like the favorite down the stretch? "Do you consider me a favorite?" he snapped back. "If you do, then I do.

"You never know," he adds. "You just never know what can happen. There's a reason we got here, so hopefully we can just keep it going."

All Zipped Up

The caring, sharing big brother who has all the answers

Greg Zipadelli at times shows the weary patience of a saint, a man bound to a labor of love. It's hard to imagine how Zipadelli, Tony Stewart's one and only NASCAR crew chief, could endure otherwise.

Perhaps only those in his close family call him Greg, to everyone else he is Zip or Zippy. Although the nickname suits in a racing context, it doesn't fully describe the stocky, dark-haired, fellow from Connecticut.

Zipadelli matured through the Modified and Busch North wars in New England, serving champions such as Mike McLaughlin and Mike Stefanik. When Joe Gibbs Racing and team chief Jim Makar scouted a crew chief for volatile newcomer Stewart, Zipadelli was called south to serve.

What is remarkable is the way the two men immediately struck a professional relationship, and one of mutual admiration and trust, beginning with Stewart's Busch debut with Gibbs in 1998.

"I would have tripped over him and not known who he was until the day I was introduced to him," Stewart recalls, "but it didn't take long to figure out how much our personalities and our desire to win was a lot alike.

"He's obviously a better group leader than I am. He's been able to keep everybody pumped up and tried to keep me out of trouble in bad times. To me, It's like having a big brother."

Zipadelli has at times been Stewart's crew chief, mentor, apologist, and, in many ways, friend. Ultimately, he builds and maintains the cars that Stewart says he "just drives." Tony trusts him to do that, and Zip, despite occasionally having to slap Tony on the jaws, trusts Stewart's surpassing talent and track sense.

"I think we're friends," Zipadelli says. "I keep my working relationship really professional and straightforward. I don't want our friendship to come between where I can't keep my mind on my work, or I'm afraid of hurting a friend's feelings."

Zipadelli's level head is "just my nature," he says. "You've got to stay where, you know, do what you've been doing. A lot of people feed off Tony. If he's more relaxed, that helps the guys out there on Sundays."

"If I come in here pitching a fit, I can disrupt the whole thing pretty easily. When the guy [rival team] sitting next to you has what you have but their attitude is better, they're going to beat you."

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- The Autosport.com Team

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