INDIANAPOLIS — Mark Martin's face retreated into the wide, childlike smile he saves for discussing the things in his life that bring him joy. He was speaking about his friend Tony Stewart.
"I'm so proud of him," said Martin, standing in the sunshine of Indianapolis Motor Speedway's Gasoline Alley. "His true colors are really showing now. They're really showing. He's one of the best persons I know in the world. It's really showing this year. I'm proud."
That's not a statement often used about Stewart. It's not the image the world has seen for the first 10 years of his NASCAR career.
Stewart swore he wouldn't change his outspoken ways when he became a team owner, but something has changed. The Tony Stewart his friends and close colleagues see is beginning to mesh with the one on display in public.
That change has been a major part of how Stewart has turned what used to be a struggling Haas/CNC team into Stewart-Haas Racing, a team challenging for the Sprint Cup title. With the right people, a keen business sense and new maturity, Stewart has made Stewart-Haas Racing an elite team.
Stewart leads the points standings heading into today's Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, his home track.
"What he's done is just phenomenal," said Ray Evernham, the former owner of Gillett Evernham Motorsports. "It's amazing and he's done it largely with about 80% of the people that were already there, brought in some key people. He was able to relinquish some responsibility. . . . It shows that Tony Stewart has much more depth than we've ever given him credit for."
Last year at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Stewart announced that Office Depot and Old Spice would sponsor his new car and team. In the garages, the deals that brought together all the rest of the pieces of his new organization began to formulate through casual yells across pit road and conversations throughout the garage.
The infrastructure of the team predated him. Haas/CNC used Hendrick Motorsports engines, just not very well. It wasn't until Stewart arrived that the team was able to turn that partnership with NASCAR's most powerful team into success.
Stewart found the people to get it done, hiring general manager Bobby Hutchens and crew chiefs Darian Grubb and Tony Gibson.
"Where our situation is different than other owner-driver combinations is we didn't have to start from scratch," Stewart said. "We had a facility that was there. We had equipment and tools there. It was just a matter of tailoring some people to find the right key people for the right key positions. So that made it less scary."
