Q&A: Tony Stewart.

Saturday, 11th February 2006

As he prepares to defend his 2005 Nextel Cup Championship, Tony Stewart talks NASCAR, his holidays, or lack thereof, Daytona, the Bud Shootout, if he can remember when it starts, sprint cars, cell phones and girls.

Previous Page

That's a huge, huge factor at this level. Now with everything being so technical and track position being important, that relationship you have with your crew chief, knowing who to trust, when he can trust me, when I say, Hey, this is what I want, I know this is the right thing to do, you know, when he's on top of the box, analysing everything, thinking this is not the right thing to do, I think I got a better idea, that trust with each other is very huge at this level now.

Q.
Have you made any teammate changes on your team this year?

TONY STEWART:
I think we've hired a new jackman, which I don't even know who it is yet, to be honest. Zippy would be the guy to ask that. I'm not sure exactly who all has changed. We had a front tyre changer. Joe had shoulder surgery over the winter. I don't know if he's a hundred percent ready to go yet or not. You know, I guess I'll know here by Saturday. When do we run this year, Saturday or Sunday night?

Advertisement [Go Advertisement Free]

Q.
Saturday.

TONY STEWART:
Saturday night. I guess Saturday night I'll know when I pull in the pits, see who jumps over the wall, see who is there or not.

Q.
Greg Biffle said during the media tour qualifying at Daytona is the most boring thing we do as race drivers. Do you view qualifying as boring?

TONY STEWART:
No, testing is boring -- the most boring thing we do as a driver at Daytona. Yeah, I mean, we spend -- it's kind of funny because we spend two hours a weekend worrying about qualifying and we spend two 45-minute sessions working on race stuff, we spend two laps in the qualifying, we spend three and a half hours in the race. I think we spend way too much time and effort for two laps of qualifying for sure.

Q.
What do you do here sitting on pit road waiting to go out to qualify? Talk on the cell phone?

TONY STEWART:
I haven't figured out how to get a cell phone inside my helmet yet.

Q.
He said he keeps his helmet off.

TONY STEWART:
The bad thing is NASCAR makes you put your helmet on before you go on pit lane so we can't do that any more. I normally am looking through the net to see – hopefully it's a hot day and there are girls in tank tops out there. You guys know me. You ask me an honest question, I'm giving you an honest answer. I'm a single guy, I'm looking for hot chicks on pit lane. That's all I'm doing. If I can't see them, normally there's a crew guy saying, you need to look at 11:00 to your left, check it out.