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Q. Tony is currently fifth in points, has four wins on the season, won once here before at Texas Motor Speedway. As we hit the stretch run of this Chase, Tony, talk about your outlook for racing here this weekend at Texas.
TONY STEWART: Well, I’m excited about it. It’s one of my favorite tracks. It’s a stop that I like on the schedule. All three of the last three here are tracks that I look forward to. That’s a real big positive. I’m excited about this weekend.
We kind of got off to a slow start this morning in race trim. I think we started getting a direction of what it’s going to want for tomorrow. We were I think 11th or 12th or something in qualifying, qualifying speed practice. Pretty excited about that, too.
Q. Tony, I know you and Ryan through your association this year with the U.S. Army have really become close to a lot of military people, soldiers. I know he took it hard this morning. How has it affected you? Did you know anyone, because of your association with your team, that was directly involved with what happened?
TONY STEWART: No, I didn’t know anybody, unfortunately. The bad part is, I mean, we focus more on the negatives that happen in society than we do the positives.
But, you know, obviously it was something that nobody would have dreamed would have happened, but it did. You know, you’re thinking about all the families and people that are involved and wish them the best.
Q. Tony, regarding practice earlier, your times looked pretty good on the charts there. Was the wind a factor? It looks like the weather is going to be pretty stable through the course of the weekend. Looks like great conditions for racing. Was the wind a factor?
TONY STEWART: No. I mean, it’s been pretty constant, stable. It’s not been gusty. That’s what normally will bother cars more than anything. If it’s at least constant and solid through the whole session, you know to look for it. It’s not something that you’re going to get picked up by a gust. So with no gusts, it really wasn’t a big issue.
Q. Tony, obviously there’s been some talk about Danica joining the NASCAR series. Just kind of what type of impact might she have of coming over here?
TONY STEWART: The same ones I mentioned two months ago when somebody asked me that. Go back and look at the notes.
That could be why he’s back in the corner of the room, right?
Q. Tony, Ryan was in earlier. He told us he had been working with NASCAR or talking to NASCAR about what happened last Sunday. As his car owner and teammate, have you had any input into why are we getting up in the air type of discussions the last two or three days?
TONY STEWART: No. Trust me, he’s the engineer. He’s the smarter one of the two of us. You know, I know he spent some time over there with them talking to them. I’m not smart enough to know how to fix it.
NASCAR has a great staff. If there was an easy solution, they would have figured it out by now. The good thing is that you have drivers that are willing to go over, like Ryan did this week, and spend time with the sanctioning body and try to help at least explain the situation from his firsthand experience.
You know, that’s the only way to make things better, is just stay in communication with NASCAR over it.
Q. Just talking about Ryan’s wreck, from the perspective of a team owner, does it affect you more than, say, when a teammate has a situation like that happen? Is there an extra maybe concern on your part, knowing he’s there because it’s your team?
TONY STEWART: Well, if he wasn’t driving for me, he’d be driving for somebody else. At the end of the day, it’s about him being a person. The harder part is that he’s a good friend of mine on top of that. He was before we were teammates. We will be if for some reason we’re not teammates in the future.
You know, he’s a person. Like I said, he’s a friend.
Anytime something like that happens, doesn’t matter whether they’re a friend of yours or not, when you got a fellow competitor out there, that’s the first thing you’re worried about, their safety.
Q. Tony, obviously you know television picked up your comments Sunday about trying to stay awake. From where you were sitting during that race, was that a boring race or was it an exciting race?
TONY STEWART: It’s not the perfect race, I wouldn’t say. I mean, you know, the thing is, the hard part is, we got you guys saying they’re boring, so when you guys say that, all you do is keep reinforcing to everybody that it’s boring. You know, it’s like Tony Glover told me this morning, they won a race I don’t know how many years ago, there were only three cars on the lead lap.
The races are exciting. It’s like everybody wants the perfect race every time. You can’t do that. I mean, the drivers think about how they can be smart all day. You know, it’s a situation where the race is so long that you can fight your guts out to try to get to the front in the first hundred miles, but what have you accomplished?
You haven’t accomplished anything, absolutely nothing. There’s nothing you’ve accomplished till those last 10 or 15 laps. That’s when you got to start working your way to the front if you’re not already up there.
You got a race that’s 188 laps long, the only thing that matters is the last 10 or 15. Anything that happens leading up to that point, the teams, the drivers are smart, they’ve figured out it doesn’t matter where you’re at. As long as you’re on that lead lap with 10 or 15 to go, in the lead draft, that’s all that matters.
The hardest thing is we got this room in particular that keeps telling people that it’s a boring race. So we leave, and then we listen to the fans complain because it’s something that they read in the magazine or read in a paper, you know, that everybody keeps trying to reinforce to them that it’s a boring race.
It wasn’t a boring race. There’s cars that are all nose-to-tail. But I don’t know what else everybody wants. I mean, it’s a strategic race. That’s all there is to it. It’s not a situation where you can do anything on your own. It never has been.
You know, I don’t know what everybody’s really wants out of the situation. I mean, everybody wants to decide whether it’s a boring race or not a boring race. Unless you got a different opinion about it, you guys make your living off this sport, I make my living off this sport, and we’re all trying to make the best out of it.
