He Has All The Tools

2 ASSEMBLING THE TEAM THAT GIVES YOU THE BEST CHANCE TO WIN

OTHER than the driver, the most important person on a racing team is the crew chief. To fill that position Stewart turned to Darian Grubb, who had managed Jimmie Johnson to the 2006 Daytona 500 victory while filling in for Chad Knaus, who was serving a suspension. Grubb then hired the rest of the personnel for the number 14 team. He had plenty of talent to choose from because of the massive layoffs on NASCAR teams at the end of the 2008 season.

TALENT SCOUT

RYAN NEWMAN

3 FINDING A TEAMMATE WHO CAN WATCH YOUR BACK, HELP WITH YOUR SETUP AND MAYBE EVEN BEAT YOU NOW AND THEN

IT'S critical that teammates get along. Drivers on the same team share setup notes, discuss different lines around the track and—especially in restrictor-plate races—work together to gain track position. Ryan Newman was Stewart's first choice to be his teammate. Besides having 13 career Cup wins, Newman also is a college-educated engineer and among the best in the sport at qualifying. (He now has 45 poles, the most this decade.) Stewart and Newman also have much in common: Both were raised in Indiana, grew up racing open-wheel cars and love the outdoors.

FRONTMAN

4 EMBRACING ALL THE TASKS OF BEING THE BOSS

FOR any NASCAR driver contemplating becoming a driver-owner, beware: What you do on the track is only a tiny portion of your job. Stewart is the face and the mouthpiece of Stewart-Haas Racing—not to mention the arms, the legs and the brains. As all of those things, he's constantly wooing sponsors and meeting with the media, as well as poring over budgets, signing paychecks and reviewing the performance of his employees. Acting as an owner, Stewart is frequently called to meetings with NASCAR to discuss various rules and policies, and every day he tries to figure out how he can grow the SHR business. Oh, yes: Come the weekend he also slides behind the wheel.