There’s no question Sprint Cup team ownership agrees with Tony Stewart, and the two-time Cup champion put the latest exclamation point on that fact Friday night at Preseason Thunder Fan Fest at Daytona International Speedway.

Stewart, looking remarkably more svelte and clean cut than a year before when he drove the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, spent the whole evening at the speedway and was low-key and genial the whole time, despite experiencing some owner-from-afar angst.

On Thursday night, one of Stewart’s USAC Midget drivers, Tracy Hines, won his qualifying feature for Saturday night’s Chili Bowl Midget Nationals in Tulsa, Okla., and Friday night his other pilot, Levi Jones, finished second to also make the main event.

Stewart’s general dislike of media functions is legendary, but he laughed when asked his level of irritation at having to be with the Cup media in Daytona versus the Chili Bowl.

“Oh gosh — that’s an easy [question] to answer — I’m missing it [Friday] night,” Stewart said, “so I’m trying to keep my cell phone close to figure out how [Jones] is running.”

All kidding aside, Stewart reiterated that he didn’t feel he’d have any more difficulty separating his driver’s role of his own No. 14 Chevrolet from his team owner’s on the Cup level any more than he’d experienced problems while running numerous open-wheel teams and operating Eldora Speedway as well as owning a piece of a couple other short tracks.

People are the key, the owner of Stewart-Haas Racing said.

[It'll be] real easy — once we leave [North Carolina] on the airplane I put the driver hat on,” Stewart said. “Still go watch my open-wheel teams like I always do. I think that’s the great thing, the way we’ve got it set up now is that when I show up at the race track all I have to worry about is driving. We’ve got a good system with [director of competition] Bobby Hutchens and the two crew chiefs involved — I don’t have to worry about being a car owner.

“When it comes to all the open-wheel teams, on the weekends when we’re racing we’ve come up with a pretty good system over the years with those guys — somebody is sending me messages every event letting me know how the heat races went, if there’s a caution in the main event [so] even though I’m distanced from the other teams while they’re on the road, I still get the updates and know what’s going on, and it really works out good for us.”

What’s also worked well for Stewart, if learning on a daily basis is a good thing, is he’s been all eyes and ears.

“Probably the biggest thing that I’ve seen is that I actually can get up at 6 o’clock in the morning,” Stewart said with a chuckle. “I did that Wednesday when we had to fly down to New Smyrna [Speedway in New Smyrna Beach, Fla.] to test. I didn’t realize that there was actually a 6 a.m. until this year — that was a shock.

“The rest of it, I have to be honest, I’m not sure that anything has been a big shock or surprise. I think I had the mindset that I had a lot to learn and that I didn’t know and don’t know everything that I need to know about being a car owner yet but that if we were able to hire the right people that I would learn as we went, and that’s what we’ve been able to do so far.”

Stewart said hiring Hutchens, an engineer, former Modified driver and longtime Richard Childress Racing employee during the Dale Earnhardt championship years was perhaps his most important move.

“Bobby Hutchens is a great mentor to me right now, and being able to learn from him — just so many little details that are very easy to overlook — and those are things that he has brought to the program already that’s given me a lot of piece of mind,” Stewart said. “It’s letting me get more sleep now, again and allowing me to focus on being a driver and an owner instead of just worrying about being an owner.

“I feel like everything is exactly where it needs to be right now. I mean, we’re a little bit behind on getting cars built, but I feel like having that luxury of not having to worry about an engine program right now is helping us get caught up, and having Hendrick chassis, all we have to do is hang our bodies right now. We’re kind of in a good situation of not having to worry about those two variables and just focusing on building the cars.”

Stewart said in the case of his team, the depressed economy had offered a couple different perspectives, but he did say the timing of his decision to take co-ownership of the former Haas CNC Racing was priceless.

“I don’t know that we really had a choice on [the economy],” Stewart said. “This was an opportunity that picked us — we didn’t go out and pick it. But I think it shows that timing is everything [because] we were able to secure our sponsorships with Office Depot and Old Spice and then getting Ryan [Newman] signed and having the U.S. Army come on board makes me really proud as an owner that we were able to get all that done before the bottom fell out of the economy.”

Stewart said that, if he wasn’t able to join with an established team he wouldn’t have considered it in the current economic environment.

“From scratch, no — definitely not,” Stewart said. “You would have to own a company that’s doing well to probably do that right now, and I was in a very fortunate position to be offered an opportunity with Haas CNC Racing to join their operation and help hopefully build it. I don’t think if it were not for an opportunity like this, we would have had this opportunity altogether, let alone with the economy the way it is now.”

The bright side, for Stewart, has been building his employee roster. The new owner said he’s been surprised at the number and caliber of unemployed people in the Charlotte, N.C., area.

“I never thought that we would see the fallout of employees that we have being released from teams, not only from the Charlotte area, but in Indianapolis, whether it’s drag race teams, IndyCar teams — I mean, the economy has really hurt all of motorsports.

“But I guess that’s probably been the one thing that’s been positive for us is when it came to look at hiring more people and better people, it kind of gave us a buffet atmosphere — almost being able to look for people because there were so many of them available — that we could sort through and pick the people that we thought were right for the program.”

As far as his general state of mind, Stewart gave good insight into that when he answered a question about his favorite Daytona 500 memory, and if he won this year’s race, since he was now driving for Carl Edwards’ former sponsor, Office Depot, would he celebrate with Edwards’ signature back flip?

“You can put all your money on no back flips — not going to happen,” Stewart said. “Not unless I want to go to the hospital and be in traction for two or three months. You know, I’m trying to remember what the first part of the question was — obviously I don’t have a memory; I can’t remember what the question was.”

Hookscenter.com wire report.