All good things must come to an end.
Tony Stewart will close another chapter in his racing career this weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway when he competes in his final race with Joe Gibbs Racing after a 10-year relationship with the team and sponsor Home Depot.
Before moving on to form his own team in 2009, Stewart will end his tenure at JGR by racing in his 356th career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race with the Home Depot Team.
"It makes me very, very proud of both my relationship with everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing and The Home Depot," Stewart said. "They've been a great company to work for and represent."
After winning the IRL IndyCar Series championship in 1997 and running a limited NASCAR Nationwide schedule in 97-98, Stewart busted onto the Cup Series scene in 1999 where he won three races and Rookie of the Year honors.
During Stewart's Cup series tenure with Gibbs he won 33 races and two Cup Series championships in each of the formats. His last title came under the Chase format in 2005 when he defeated Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle by 35 points.
"It's been a lot of fun," Stewart said. "We’ve been through a lot of highs and a lot of lows, but at the end of the day, we've had a lot of fun and we've won a lot of races and won two championships. I think we've had a very successful 10 years."
If Stewart does not pull into victory lane on Sunday, last month's race at Talladega Superspeedway will go down as his last win with JGR - a victory that extended his streak of winning at least one race every year in his career.
"At that time of the season, we wouldn't have predicted we would only have one win on our season," Stewart said. "It definitely puts a lot of emphasis on that particular win now.
"As competitive as we all are, when you've won every year, you don't want to end the season without having won a race. I think that almost would be the most devastating part of a season to say you had a season that wasn't successful because of that."
Sunday will also signal the end of the current longest active crew chief/driver combination in the Sprint Cup garage.
Crew chief Greg Zipadelli, who has been with Stewart since the beginning, will now call the shots for Stewart's replacement in 2009 - Joey Logano.
"As much as you're gone and as much as you travel and as many races as we run, you'd think it would feel like forever, but it's hard to believe a little over 10 years has passed since we started this deal here," Zipadelli said. "It's been really exciting and we've accomplished a lot of good things and we have nothing to hang our heads about."
The 2008 season has seen Stewart capture the lowest amount of top 10s (15) in his career, which has put him on the verge of not making it into the top 10 in the standings for the second time in his career.
"We've definitely fallen short of that," said Stewart about if this season was a success. "It's because this team – we hold ourselves to a lot higher standards than a lot of the other teams do and we expect more out of ourselves.
"We've just fallen short."
Fallen short or not this season, one thing for sure is that one of the greatest Driver/Team/Crew Chief/Sponsor combinations in the history of NASCAR will be coming to an end this weekend.
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