Why Stewart-Haas can win a Cup Series championship

I've known for weeks -- heck, more than a month -- that I was going to owe not only Tony Stewart but his entire Stewart-Haas Racing organization an apology.

The lucky thing for me is that Stewart doesn't care about accepting apologies, or even over-analyzing success. He's put the people in place, and man, he's letting those horses run.

Pocono win sure bet of more to come ...

There will be more victories and memories and statistics of note for Stewart-Haas Racing down the road, says Joe Menzer.

• Complete story
• Race Chatter: Stewart
• Stewart wins at Pocono

He's totally focused on winning a championship, and at this point it looks like Stewart has just as good a chance to win one this season -- with either of his teams -- as anyone named Johnson, Edwards, Gordon or Busch has.

And if Stewart does, that'll be cause for a standing ovation, never mind an apology. Those will be buried in their Chevrolets' dust.

The likelihood of eating crow became more and more apparent as week after week of the 2009 season passed -- and not only did the performance of Stewart's No. 14 Chevrolet not fade, it continued to blossom.

And supporting it like a dogged World War II wingman was teammate Ryan Newman, whose No. 39's early season whiffs could've knocked a lesser organization to its knees and their program into "building for 2010 mode" only a quarter of the way into the schedule.

But here we are, just past the halfway mark to the cutoff for the Chase, and where's Stewart-Haas? Stewart's team has been to Victory Lane twice -- including its first points win at Pocono -- and leads the series in top-five finishes (tied with Jeff Gordon) and top-10s from atop the point standings.

And Newman, who had a couple of startling breakout years with Penske Racing, but then seemed to slip into competent but far from scintillating doldrums the past couple years? He jumped to fourth in the standings after finishing fifth at Pocono, his sixth consecutive top-eight finish, with five of them top-fives.

Yup, I'd say it's time for that apology. It's maybe even a bit overdue.

It doesn't make me feel one doggoned bit better that I'm in pretty good company when it came to underestimating the reclamation project executed by Stewart, his business managers Brett Frood and Eddie Jarvis, competition gurus Bobby Hutchens and Matt Borland and their crew chiefs Darian Grubb and Tony Gibson and Haas CNC Racing partners Gene Haas and Joe Custer.

I've long thought I understood the critical (and usually overlooked) element that chemistry plays in race team's success. And yet that far-from-simple element is all it took for Stewart-Haas to succeed. According to competition director Hutchens maintained more than 70 percent of Haas CNC's work force. Even Stewart's pit crew -- which executed a decisive, race-winning final stop on Sunday -- is mostly the group that barely finished 2008 in the top 35 in owners' points tending Scott Riggs' No. 66 car. (Continued)