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If I had said this six months ago, you would have insisted that I'd lost my last marble. But now the notion doesn't seem so crazy, does it? I pick Tony Stewart to win the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship.

That's right - my money's on "Smoke" and I'm feeling pretty confident given the way he's behaving lately. Taking the point lead at Dover, and winning for the first time as a car owner a week later at Pocono, sealed the deal for me, but let me point out that six months ago I was in the minority who believed in the notion that Stewart-Haas Racing would actually succeed.

This week Tony Stewart is holding his annual, HBO pay-per-view all-star charity race, a multi-million dollar fundraiser that he named, the "Prelude to the Dream."

As of Sunday afternoon's NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Dover, Del., it's clear Stewart -- the new championship leader -- is already living the dream, no matter how unlikely or far fetched it may have seemed five months ago.

Tony Stewart may be just getting his feet wet with that little business venture he's starting for the 2009 Sprint Cup Series, but that certainly doesn't mean he's giving up on one of his true loves:

Open-wheel midget racing in the Mid-West.

So, for another year, Stewart showed up at Fort Wayne's (Indiana) Memorial Coliseum last Friday and Saturday to take part in the "Rumble in Fort Wayne" -- an indoor midget race on a 1/6-mile track set up on the floor of the convention hall. (That's Stewart on the left)

Reports from the local paper indicate that Stewart's winning percentage for the two-night event was 50 percent after he bumped the leader out of the way in the Friday night version to take the checkered flag. Stewart apologized immediately after the race for the contact, saying it wasn't intentional and that "it was my fault."

The driver he bumped, Lou Cicconi Jr., understood Stewart and followed it up by winning the feature race the next night and beating Stewart by a third of a lap, or roughly the length of a football field.

In a telltale sign of how different NASCAR and other top levels of racing are from their short-track roots, Cicconi Jr., announced earlier in the week that he was selling a race he bought to beat Stewart with simply because the officials were "busting [his] chops" about the measurements, and that he'd be leaving the racing series. You can find that chassis for sale on a messageboard.

Think you'd ever see Rick Hendrick or Jack Roush make a call like that? Doubt it.

There's a myriad of adjectives one could use to describe Tony Stewart's decade-long stint with Joe Gibbs Racing, ranging from controversial to impressive.

One thing is for sure though: Tony Stewart helped make JGR a tangible force in the NASCAR world.

Joining with 2000 Sprint Cup champion Bobby Labonte for his first full season in NASCAR's top series in 1999, Stewart came to NASCAR lacking heavy amounts of stock car experience, nor a win in the Nationwide or Craftsman Truck Series.

He would go on to win three races in his rookie season and has totaled 30 more since that time, in addition to two season championships. Currently, Stewart is the only driver to have won championships in both the Chase forthe Sprint Cup format and the original season-long format.

Obviously, Stewart's had quite an impressive run at JGR and it'll certainly be interesting to watch as he gets Stewart-Haas Racing up and running for 2009 with Ryan Newman. In the mean time, though, let's take a look back at some of the fun we've had talking about Stewart here at FanHouse in past year or two.

Stop by NASCAR FanHouse on Sunday at 1pm/ET for some good ol' fashioned live bloggin' of Sunday's Chevy Rock & Roll 400. It'll be Chase-tastic!

I've had a few days now to muse over the recent profile piece done in Rolling Stone on the always lovable Tony Stewart.

If you haven't had a chance to read it yourself, I'd highly recommend it. And if you have read it, I'm sure you'll agree with me on a couple of fronts:

1) If you love Stewart because of his rank attitude and keen ability to not adapt to what people say he should be, then this piece exemplifies why so many people are so passionate in cheering for Tony and ...

2) If you're not the biggest Stewart fan but enjoy reading about how drivers really live outside of the limelight, it's again right up your alley.

The article is loaded with juicy tidbits about Stewart's life and the language he uses when he's not around the media -- or at least attempts to refrain from using. It mainly follows Stewart over the course of a few races earlier in 2008 and includes written imagery about Stewart riding back on his airplane, what the inside of his Hummer looks like, and just how "lavish" his Columbus, Ind. home is.

The best part by far, however, is when Stewart bashes Kurt Busch during the qualifying session this past May at Texas Motor Speedway [and as a slight warning, the language isn't exactly Disney movie appropriate]:

Tony Stewart is already changing things up at newly-formed Stewart-Haas Racing, despite a car having yet to turn a lap under the team's banner.

Monday night on his radio show, Stewart decided -- or at least he informed everyone -- that Ryan Newman wouldn't be driving the No. 4 as originally planned. Instead, Newman will parade the No. 39 yet-to-be-sponsored Chevrolet in 2009.

The switch comes three days after Stewart formalized plans at Michigan International Speedway for Newman to compete with the No. 4.

Stewart offered two reasons for the change: The No. 39 is special to Newman because he won his first United States Auto Club midget race with the number, and Stewart wanted to leave the No. 4 available to its long-time carrier, Morgan-McClure Motorsports, should the team return to the Sprint Cup Series next year.

Newman has also driven the No. 39 in a number of Nationwide Series starts with Penske Racing over the past few years.

The second reason Stewart gives, though, seems more like the real reason for the switch after Tim Morgan voiced his displeasure to a Bristol, Tenn. newspaper last Friday about the SHR number selection.

Despite a press conference Friday that left a lot of people with a lot of questions, Ryan Newman is officially hired on at Stewart-Haas Racing -- and a big part of that is just to simply have more "fun".

"The bottom line is that I want to have fun," said Newmanduring the Stewart-Haas press conference at Michigan International Speedway on Friday.

"I'm here to have fun and I know (Stewart) he wants to have fun doing this."

I'd assume that the definition for "fun" carries two mandates: being in contention to win more races and having a nice contract with multiple zeros at the end of the compensation line. Both drivers are known fisherman, so that might be included in the "fun" deal, too.

Leading up to the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, word was that Martin Truex Jr. was going to re-sign with Dale Earnhardt Inc. for 2009, and potentially longer. Truex, though, wasn't happy about the report done by ESPN.com's David Newton:

"It's (expletive). I don't know what the hell (the reporter) is talking about. He doesn't know what he's talking about," Truex said.

It turns out, though, that Newton was ultimately right. Whether or not he was right at the time, though, is still up in the air.

Regardless, Martin Truex Jr. is expected to announce later Friday that he will be staying at DEI in the No. 1 car for at least one more year. In contract terms, Truex actually just accepted the DEI's proposal to pick up the one-year option for '09 that was already in his previous deal.

Truex's move takes away at least a fraction of the rumor game being currently played throughout the Sprint Cup garage area, as he has been rumored for any number of open seats in 2009 including Stewart-Haas Racing, Penske Racing, and Richard Childress Racing.

FanHouse's Geoffrey Miller is on location & blogging away at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Sunday's 15th Running of the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

Friday morning, word got out that NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Tony Stewart was in some kind of altercation at O'Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis during a Midget race involving a race team that he owns.

Stewart was alleged to have gotten extremely heated at USAC race officials after his car, driven by Tracey Hines, was forced to a go a lap down after officials had deemed the team had taken too long to repair the car prior to the green flag coming out.

The result of Stewart's anger has now been made available online thanks to an Indianapolis television station, WTHR-13, who received the homemade video from a fan who was in the grandstands that night.

The video, which is only 0:46 seconds long, clearly shows an irate Stewart yelling directly in the face of a USAC official. At that point, Stewart hadn't done anything wrong, and its quite normal to see an irritated crew member getting after it with an official in the racing world -- just like an umpire and a baseball manager would do.

Unfortunately, though, Stewart doesn't stop there, appearing to jab his finger into the USAC official's chest before ripping off his headset and throwing it to the ground. Stewart then appears to storm away from the official before confronting another official and pushing him backwards.