Harvick shares Cup title with Stewart

— -- HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Tony Stewart had shed his fire suit long before, his race car retired with mechanical misery on Lap 182. An incredibly frustrating season as a Sprint Cup driver had ended with indignity. It was in keeping with the tenor of 2014.

But standing aside the champion's stage at the finish line of Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday night, clad in a Stewart-Haas Racing polo shirt, the three-time series champion was exultant, grinning devilishly. His friend and teammate and employee had fulfilled his pledge. He greeted Kevin Harvick and accepted a beer-soaked hug.

The most troubling year of Stewart's life and most wearisome of his professional career had culminated here, with Harvick winning the final race of the season and subsequently a first championship at NASCAR's highest level. Everything wasn't righted. But in this moment, is was better. And Stewart was loath to impinge on the moment.

"I'm just glad tonight turned out," Stewart said. "You know, the rest of it's history. We've talked about it over and over. Honestly, I'm tired of talking about it, to be honest, at this point.

"I'm more excited about what this organization and what this group of people has done together. You know, there's a lot of things I would love to change about the last 18 months of my life, but tonight is not one of them."

Stewart began the season with expectations of returning to the Chase for the Sprint Cup with three of his four drivers, saying at Speedweeks preceding the Daytona 500 that while second-year driver Danica Patrick still needed time to mature as a stock car driver, he, Harvick and unexpected offseason addition Kurt Busch should contend. Busch won at Martinsville to gain entry to the playoffs, but was otherwise disappointing for most of the season and bowed out of the Chase after one round.

Stewart, returning to the No. 14 Chevrolet for the first time since severely breaking his right leg in a sprint car accident in August 2013, struggled to grasp the aerodynamics of this iteration of the Generation 6 race car. His season was waning before it took a tragic personal turn on Aug. 9. Racing in an Empire Super Sprints event at Canandaigua (New York) Motorsports Park, Stewart struck and killed driver Kevin Ward Jr. as he walked on-track to confront him under a caution. Stewart went into seclusion as he dealt with his grief, missing three Sprint Cup races before returning at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Aug. 31.

The popular and irascible driver managed just one top-10 finish upon his return -- a fourth at Martinsville -- and went winless in 2014, ending a 15-year run that encompassed his entire Cup career. The streak ended on Sunday with a last-place finish that relegated him to a 25th-place points finish. A champion as a driver/owner in 2011, he had never completed a full season worse than 11th.

Harvick was the source of optimism for the organization all season despite maddening fits and starts for the first-year team. Members of all four crews mobbed Harvick after he took a championship flag and sent smoke billowing with a postrace burnout. In his first season with the team, he culminated a five-win campaign in which he led an astounding 2,137 laps with the championship Stewart had promised.

Stewart was instrumental in putting together Harvick and crew chief Rodney Childers, whom co-owner Gene Haas deemed a "dream team." Stewart, as had been the plan when he partnered with the machine tools magnate in 2009, had provided the racing savvy to craft championships. Knowing Harvick sought a new opportunity while stagnating after 14 seasons at Richard Childress Racing, Stewart enticed him with the promise of a first title and paired him with a new team led by Childers, who had never finished better than 18th in points as a crew chief and entered the season with just three career wins.

"I wasn't even going to take the job until Tony got in his airplane and flew to Concord [North Carolina] to meet me one night, and then he got back on his plane and went back to Indiana," Childers recalled. "And on my drive home, I said, if anybody is willing to, No. 1, do that for me and spend that kind of money for me, they're going to look after me. He looked me in the eyes that night and said, 'We're going to do this.' To be able to bring a championship home for every single employee at Stewart-Haas Racing is just amazing."

Haas said Stewart "has the ability to draw so much talent from the Sprint Cup garage. Sometimes I am just in awe of it."

"You've got to be a little bit crazy to want to do this," Stewart said. "The odds say you're going to be unsuccessful more than you're going to be successful. But it's these single moments like this that make all of that hard work worthwhile, and that's why we do it."

Stewart appeared moved to tears -- Harvick said it was the first time he had seen Stewart "the least bit emotional" -- in Victory Lane after Harvick won at Phoenix International Raceway to secure a spot in the final. Stewart had spent the evening in Harvick's motor coach plotting the week, parsing what he called the pitfalls and potential distractions. Harvick, who had decided in 2012 to move to SHR, seeking the Cup championship that had eluded him, said he hoped this week to make his friend smile by sharing such a moment as Sunday. He did.

"I know he's been through a lot this year, but very rarely have we talked about those situations," Harvick said. "He's my friend, and I want to see him happy and work through the situations that he has. We're fortunate to be able to work together and have those situations to where we race cars and do the things that we love to do. But in the end, I just want to see him happy."

And on this night, he saw it through.