Stewart: Indy a good barometer

Stewart recently won his first race of the season at Chicagoland - the 30th of his Nextel Cup career - and he is one to believe that a victory at Indy is a good barometer of what the rest of the season may bring, having won it in 2005 when he last took the title.

"It just seems to be if you have the package that's right to win there, it's a package that pretty much keeps you ahead of the game at a bunch of the tracks that we run in the Chase too," Stewart says.

"It's a place that is a momentum-driven track. You don't just have two ends to the race track and two big 180-degree corners. You've got four 90-degree corners to negotiate.

"If you have one bad corner at Indy and if your car's not right, you're going to be bad in four corners versus two corners a lap."

Stewart is one of only ten drivers who have competed both in the Indy 500 and the Brickyard 400, and believes that, despite the lower speeds, a stock car is more challenging to drive around the 2.5-mile track than an IndyCar.

"In an Indy car you just don't lift -- if the car's right. But in a stock car, even if it's right, you've got to lift and you've got to brake for at least two of the corners. With the other two corners, you just lift, basically," Stewart added.

"It's a challenging track in a Cup car. It's a challenging track in an Indy car too, but if you can get it right in an Indy car then you can run it wide-open around there, and that's one less variable you've got to worry about when it comes to getting around the race track."

Stewart, an Indiana state native, currently runs sixth in the Nextel Cup standings and besides his 2005 victory at the Brickyard he has one pole position and has completed every lap in eight races at the venue.