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Eddie Gossage meant well (and, in fact, it was a heck of a quote).
He raised a rhetorical question regarding Tony Stewart’s first-year success as a Sprint Cup team owner."When was the last time," asked Eddie G, "an expansion team won the Super Bowl?"The president/promoter of all things Texas Motor Speedway and auto racing already had the correct answer: Zero."I just think the experience we have as a team doesn’t necessarily put us in that [expansion] category," said Ryan Newman, who drives the U.S. Army Chevrolet for upstart Stewart-Haas Racing. OK. Fine. We really can’t conjure up images of the 1962 New York Mets or the 1960 Dallas Cowboys … now can we, Eddie?But it’s still a sexy notion that Stewart has two cars in the Chase as a first-time Sprint Cup team owner: His own No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice Chevy and Newman’s No. 39 Chevy.That’s two more cars than Tom Landry had wins in 1960. (OK, cut that out.) Like a lot of sports, auto racing is the culmination of a lot of man hours by a lot of different folks in a lot of different jobs. But nobody here is above turning a wrench.That’s the beauty of racing."Racing is a people business," Newman said. "It’s all about the people."With that, Newman rattles off kudos starting with Stewart-Haas Racing crew chiefs Tony Gibson (No. 39 car) and Darian Grubb (No. 14 car) and the spotters … and, well, you know how NASCAR drivers are. There’s not enough space here. "Obviously, we have a great resource from the mechanical side in Hendrick Motorsports," Newman continued, "but it’s how our people are able to utilize this information and work together that makes the difference."Casey Stengel could’ve used a little more of that with the ’62 Mets. They lost 120 games. When Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman stepped back and looked at their short-lived venture in Sprint Cup competition as co-owners of Hall of Fame Racing, they agreed that the first year was "a learning process."Well, let’s just say Tony Stewart might find throwing a spiral in a Super Bowl for the first time to be "a learning process."At any rate, Stewart-Haas Racing never did get the memo on this. It was never a learning process for Stewart or Newman. They ended up in the Chase, composing one-sixth of field, on their first try as a team.Newman credits it to chemistry."And with any form of chemistry, there are fast reactions and there are slow reactions," he explained. "It’s just a matter of how quickly you jell and can make an impact on your team."Stewart and Newman are really, really quick.They’re impact drivers who don’t like to lose.And if you’re wondering if Stewart’s short-fused personality has been a problem in an ownership role … well, don’t. Newman has found nothing difficult in working for a guy named "Smoke." "I’ve never seen a driver who hasn’t had some form of volatile past," Newman said. "[As a group] we’re very egotistical people with a lot of desire, whether it’s me or Tony or Jimmie Johnson. We’ve all had some kind of confrontation. That’s just part of racing, in my opinion."
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