HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Before this interview begins, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is asked to take off the dark sunglasses, the ones he's been wearing most of Sunday regardless of whether he has been in the bright South Florida sun or inside.

The person beside him asks why.

Stenhouse understands.

"Because I've been up all night," he explains.

Yes, the 24-year-old celebrated the Nationwide Series title he clinched on Saturday at Homestead-Miami Speedway in fine fashion. He partied all night at one of the hottest clubs on South Beach, then watched the sun come up on the beach wearing a black cowboy hat and holding on to his trophy like a baby would a favorite blanket.

From there he drove back to the speedway for a breakfast and later a tweet-up with fans. Then it was off to appearance after appearance after appearance.

"I've been up since 8 a.m. on Saturday," Stenhouse says around 2 p.m., now 30 hours without sleep and counting.

Stenhouse doesn't care. Less than two years from seeing his driving future in jeopardy, when he seemingly was wrecking more cars than he wasn't, the 24-year-old Roush Fenway Racing driver is living the dream.

Kudos to NASCAR for revamping the system to give non-full-time Sprint Cup drivers a chance to win the title, which hadn't happened since Martin Truex Jr. in 2005. That the governing body got Stenhouse as its champion is a plus. He represents a fresh young face that the sport needs.

The genuine emotion that Stenhouse showed on Saturday as he stood on the main stage meant far more to the sport than seeing a Cup driver basking in the spotlight for a sixth straight year. Stenhouse's only regret is that his car finished third in the owners' championship.

That went to the No. 60 RFR car in which Cup driver Carl Edwards won eight races, followed by the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing car in which Cup driver Kyle Busch won eight times.

"Next year we want to win both," Stenhouse says.

He says it with the zest one wouldn't expect from someone who has been up all night. He says it with the determination that makes one believe he can do it.

"That would be a big thing to hang our hats on," Stenhouse says.

The sad part of this story is the economy hasn't recovered to the point that Stenhouse has secured sponsorship to defend his title. The happy ending is he has the word of team owner Jack Roush that he will get that opportunity.

"Worst-case scenario, we'll be in a car doing the same thing we did this year," Stenhouse says.

A young woman stops to hug Stenhouse. Then another.

Then it's off to another appearance, back to South Beach for a few hours of R&R on the beach and eventually back to the track for a late-night champion's photograph session.

Stenhouse's eyes may be red, but sleep is overrated when you're in the midst of a dream.

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- What better person to judge what NASCAR statisticians call the third-closest finale in Sprint Cup history than the driver who was involved in the closest.

But first, let's revisit the closest.

"I was determined to dethrone The King," Darrell Waltrip said as he recalled the 1979 finale, in which he had a two-point lead over then-six-time champion Richard Petty going to Ontario, Calif. "That was my mission that year. We had outperformed Petty just about the whole year long. It was our championship to lose.

"And that's what we ended up doing."

Waltrip lost because, to put it simply, his team wasn't focused.

"We made a number of mistakes," said Waltrip, who went on to become a three-time champion and Hall of Famer. "First of all, we decided that we were going to relax by going to Las Vegas on the way to Ontario. So we partied and had a big time and tried to take our minds off the championship.

"I really think looking back we should have stayed more focused on the job at hand and not played around."

That lack of focus was most evident when a car spun in front of Waltrip on Lap 38. The driver known as "Jaws" was so upset that he "wasn't paying attention" and came on pit road before catching up to the rear of the field to go a lap down.

He went on to finish eighth to Petty's fifth and lost the title by 11 points.

"From November of 1979 to this day, my golden rule is you don't beat yourself, and that's what we did that year," Waltrip said.

Waltrip says he sees a lot of similarities in Sunday's finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Carl Edwards is looking for his first title going against somewhat of a legend in two-time champion Tony Stewart. Edwards has dominated most of the season while Stewart has come out of nowhere with four wins in the Chase.

Waltrip likes Stewart's experience and confidence. After meeting with both drivers at Thursday's contenders press conference, he said Edwards "had nothing for" Stewart in terms of smack talk.

Waltrip also senses that Edwards is more nervous than he's letting on.

"I first saw it at Texas," Waltrip said. "I could see a real change in Carl's demeanor after the race. He had a look of concern. I really look at body language."

Waltrip gives Edwards a slight advantage because of crew chief Bob Osborne, whom he believes is a better strategist than Darian Grubb. He also likes Edwards' record at Homestead -- he's won two of the past three and compiled an average finish of 5.7 on the 1.5-mile track.

Stewart hasn't won at Homestead since the track was reconfigured, and his average finish is 12.4 with no finish better than eighth in the last six races.

So who does Waltrip like to win the title?

"Tony has that [Dale] Earnhardt attitude," Waltrip said. "He lays low and kind of chuckles about everything around him. Carl, you can tell he's just a bit wee uptight. You've got to go in a race without any pressure."

And the winner?

"They're both fiery and can go off in a heartbeat," Waltrip said.

In other words, it'll be the driver who doesn't break the golden rule and beat himself.

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Brad Keselowski jokingly was told he would hear from NASCAR when he took a negative shot at the governing body's planned move to fuel injection following a recent question and answer fan session at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in North Carolina.

At worst, it was suggested that the No. 2 Penske Racing Dodge would be a random selection for further inspection the rest of the season the way Jimmie Johnson's car has been since his crew chief was caught suggesting that the five-time champion intentionally damage the back of the car if it won at Talladega.

Unfortunately, Keselowski did get a call.

And a $25,000 fine.

Make that a "secret" fine.

So NASCAR wants drivers to be more personable and speak their minds, but only as long as it's not something that chairman Brian France says denigrates the sport. It's happened four times that we know of over the past year, including a $50,000 slap on the wrist last year to Denny Hamlin when he referred to a phantom debris caution on Twitter.

I understand NASCAR has to have some control over what's said. Other sports fine athletes when they are critical about officiating because it is a slap at the integrity of the sport.

What Keselowski said did no harm to the sport. It simply was a matter of opinion on fuel injection, that it won't make a significant improvement on fuel mileage, that it will cost owners more money at a time when owners are scraping for every penny.

He added that cars on the street are "injected with real electronics, not a throttle body [like in NASCAR]."

"So we've managed to go from 50-year-old technology to 35-year-old technology," Keselowski said. "I don't see what the big deal is."

What Hamlin said was like a shot at officiating. What Keselowski said was like a shot at the Car of Tomorrow, which at least half the garage has done. Sure, he might have said it less harshly and deserved a "wish you hadn't said that" speech, but a fine was unnecessary.

That it was secret -- word of the fine leaked out on social media -- only created the impression that NASCAR officials have other secrets they're not telling, which France insisted isn't true.

"Look, don't panic over this," France said. "We'll look at it in the offseason, if we need to change it, we'll change it. Not a big deal."

It is a big deal because it confuses all the more what drivers can and can't say.

"Hell, I don't know," Keselowski said when asked if he understood the limits. "I ain't got all the answers. You tell me."

To Keselowski's credit, he accepted NASCAR's fine without complaint. He actually said he deserved it, not so much for what he said but because he's gotten away with worse without a fine.

What's clear to Keselowski and all of us is NASCAR is a dictatorship, which it has to be in order to be successful. Keselowski actually likes France's comparison of the sport to a restaurant -- that if the food isn't good, nobody is going to eat it.

But even in this dictatorship, there should be more room to express opinion without paying a price.

Keselowski explained this by using his own restaurant analogy, saying that he always asks the waitress what she wouldn't recommend to see if he can trust what she recommends.

"You only trust the person if they can admit they have one item on the menu that is not quite so good," Keselowski said.

Nice.

Let's hope Keselowski continues to stand up to the governing body -- that this incident doesn't force him to retreat from social media the way Hamlin admits he did after his fine.

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- A former IndyCar Series driver won Saturday's Nationwide Series race at Phoenix International Raceway, but it wasn't Danica Patrick.

The JR Motorsports driver spent more time driving from her Phoenix home to the track than she did on the lead lap of a race won by 2006 Indianapolis 500 champion Sam Hornish Jr.

Patrick was involved in a multicar crash on the first lap that immediately put her two laps down. She finished 21st, four laps down.

[+] Enlarge
Todd Warshaw/NASCAR/Getty ImagesDanica Patrick limped off the track at Phoenix International Raceway after getting tangled up in a Lap 1 accident.

"Sorry," Patrick said over her radio immediately after the wreck.

Patrick, outside of this race at her home track, hasn't had much to be sorry about this season. Her average finish going into the race had improved from 28.0 in 2010 to 15.6. At one point she had three top-10s in four races.

She had nothing really to be sorry for Saturday as the wreck wasn't her fault.

"If I qualified higher I wouldn't have been in that situation," radioed Patrick, who qualified 25th.

Good point.

But Patrick did, despite a heavily damaged car, miss the six other multicar wrecks. Not everybody can say that. Elliott Sadler saw his championship hopes dashed because Jason Leffler dumped him, virtually locking Ricky Stenhouse Jr. into the championship.

"It just sucks when it happens so early," Patrick said of being knocked out of contention. "The early ones and the late ones are real sucky for me."

Patrick later settled into a groove and told crew chief Tony Eury Jr., "we can use this as an entire test session."

"Whatever you want me to try so when we come back in the spring we'll know what we are doing," she said, referring to the second race next year when she'll be competing in her first full Nationwide season.

She did.

"It sucks," Eury said. "You have them kind of days. You've just got to minimize them next year. That she got through the race is a positive. That's part of the game."

The improvement Patrick has made this season and what we saw out of Hornish set the stage for two former IndyCar drivers to be contenders for the 2012 championship.

As much as Patrick was disappointed that she didn't have a chance to compete, you had to feel good for Hornish. He failed miserably when elevated to the Cup series way too fast, finishing no better than 28th in the standings in three full seasons for Penske Racing.

That ultimately cost him his ride after 2010 and forced him to move back to Nationwide to start over.

"You're going to see a lot of Hornish in the winner's circle in the future," said team owner Roger Penske, who conceded he rushed Hornish into Cup too soon.

You may not see Patrick in Victory Lane anytime soon, but she is taking the right approach. She's shown after two part-time Nationwide seasons that she's ready for full-time competition next year.

Only time will tell if she'll be ready for a full-time Cup ride in 2013, but she's doing the right thing by easing into NASCAR's top series with a part-time schedule in 2012.

The best part of this weekend for Patrick was she got to sleep in her own bed.

The best part for that other IndyCar driver was he got to spend it in Victory Lane.

INDIANAPOLIS -- In a rather nondescript building at the end of a side road about 10 minutes from Indianapolis Motor Speedway amid a bunch of other nondescript buildings, there's a stock car about the size of a go-kart going through a wind-tunnel test.

The car is owned by Earnhardt Ganassi Racing. It has a No. 1 on the right side and No. 42 on the left, but there is no miniature Jamie McMurray or Juan Pablo inside. I looked just to make sure.

But what goes on in this room with this car -- scaled down to 40 percent the size of the 3,500-pound cars that Chevrolet has driven to 34 manufacturer titles in Cup, including nine of the past 10 -- isn't small at all. It's big, actually.

Real big.

In this tunnel at the Auto Research Center used by General Motors is where much of the technology that Chevrolet teams use in NASCAR's premier series is developed. Other manufacturers have similar facilities.

I'm here shadowing ESPN analyst Tim Brewer as he does a behind-the-scenes television piece on the facility that GM has operated out of for 10 years. It's safe to say the technology is more advanced than anything Brewer had in winning Cup titles with Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip.

"Leaps and bounds," Brewer says.

The initial investment in the wind tunnel for GM was huge, about $15 million -- or about $14 million what it cost to build a seven-post shaker that teams use. The initial investment for a team also is big, about $200,0000 to build the carbon-fiber car.

To put that in perspective, you can build a full-size stock car for that or less.

But after the initial cost this really is a cost-saving measure. Teams can come to the facility with a pair of engineers, no car, fuel or any other things necessary for a full wind-tunnel test. If a part has to be replaced it can be done for a fraction of the cost. And the results are big.

"It shows up well on the track," says Kevin Bayless, the aero and chassis program manager at GM.

Such as?

"Nothing I am liberty to tell you," he says.

Yes, there's some top-secret stuff here. If a Chevrolet team learns something, it doesn't have to share it with the other teams, either.

When I ask if EGR found something here that helped McMurray win the 2010 Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400, aero design engineer Josh Wilson smiles.

"We spend a lot of money in research and development," Wilson says. "A large chunk goes to aerodynamic research."

In other words, he's not giving away secrets.

So why use this scaled-down version instead of a full wind tunnel? It's cheaper after the initial investment. It's also more efficient in many ways because there's a belt under the car that can turn the wheels up to 110 mph to match the speed of the wind. That helps, according to Bayless, give more accurate information for air flow under the car.

This wind tunnel also doesn't require teams to take cars out of inventory and ship them to the facility.

That doesn't mean teams don't use full wind tunnels as well. The top teams use every avenue to improve, and suffice to say Hendrick Motorsports spends a lot of time here.

Convincing crew chiefs that the model works wasn't easy at first, but after seeing how the results have translated to performance on the track, they have turned around.

Brewer admits he might have been initially skeptical as a crew chief.

"Seeing is believing," he says.

When I ask if there is any data that could help me predict the winner on Sundays, I got one of those if-I-told-you-I-would-have-to-kill-you looks.

"Things found here have been reflected on the track," Bayless says coyly.

He doesn't elaborate. Going behind the scenes doesn't mean you get to know everything behind the scenes.

Trevor Bayne beat himself up on Twitter following Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway for abandoning Chevrolet driver Jeff Gordon in favor of fellow Ford driver Matt Kenseth in the final two laps.

The reigning Daytona 500 champion went so far as to write he was "strong-armed" into hooking up with Kenseth once Kenseth lost dancing partner David Ragan, adding, "I won't race restrictor plate races next year before I'm put in that situation."

Roush Fenway Racing executives told me no team orders came from them for Bayne -- in the No. 21 Wood Brothers car that gets its engines and chassis from RFR -- to leave his childhood hero after promising to push him before the final restart.

Kenseth wrote on Twitter afterward, "For the record I had no verbal contact with [Bayne] today, or for that matter weeks. Not sure who 'strong armed' him but I assure you it wasn't me."

Kenseth wrote strong-armed in response to Bayne writing on Twitter, "I would have rather pulled over and finished last than tell [Jeff Gordon] I would work with him and then be strong armed into bailing."

Jamie Allison, the director of Ford Racing, said the only mention of Ford drivers helping other Ford drivers if the opportunity arose came before the Chase during conversations "to thank them for their relationship with Ford Motorsports."

"I can tell you unequivocally that we did not issue any team orders before, during or in this race," Allison said. "I wasn't even there. … None of this team orders or mandates.

"At the end of the day, when you look at it, it's very cut and dry. Trevor did what he needed to help a teammate."

Even if Bayne was given orders or strong-armed, even if this scenario was discussed at some point prior to the race or Chase, what's the big deal? Richard Childress, the owner of the winning car driven by Clint Bowyer, said "We were going to help Chevy try to win it."

He didn't mind Paul Menard pushing Chevy driver Tony Stewart, but you can bet your bottom dollar he wouldn't have wanted Menard pushing Kenseth.

Do people really believe team orders don't exist on some levels?

Had Gordon been in the same position with a fellow Hendrick Motorsports or Stewart-Haas Racing teammate, he surely would have done the same thing Bayne did. As the four-time champion said on Twitter, "Shud have known what wud happen with #21. My bad 4 thinking different."

Bayne, whose contract is owned by RFR even though he drives a limited Cup schedule for the Wood Brothers, obviously felt bad about what happened. He went to Gordon's car immediately after the race and said, according to Gordon, "Hey, it wasn't me; it wasn't me. That's what I'm being told to do."

Bayne shouldn't feel guilty for trying to further Kenseth's run at a championship any more than he should feel guilty for furthering his own career that hinges on sponsorship for 2012. Allison actually called Bayne and told him he was "proud of what he did."

But knowing Bayne is a 20-year-old with strong Christian beliefs, you can understand his dilemma about going back on what many would consider a promise.

Gordon's only real complaint was it wasn't "handled better."

"If somebody is going to screw you, you'd like them to say it to your face, you know? Or, at least on the radio," Gordon told reporters with a laugh after the race. "I would have been totally fine with that and understood."

That's a bit unrealistic when you're making a split-second decision with two laps left and trying to reach speeds of 200 mph.

Gordon didn't help with Bayne's guilt when he added, "I don't think he really ever had any intentions [of] pushing me, and I think, you know, the Ford folks said if he did, um, told him that he was gonna do something different."

This simply is a product of tandem racing, which makes for a lot of strange bedfellows. Kenseth lost Ragan as a partner because the No. 6 RFR driver had engine problems. Gordon was dealing with Bayne, his partner for much of Daytona Speedweeks, because he lost partner Mark Martin.

As Bayne wrote on Twitter, "At that time Matt and David were supposed to be working together … I had no idea what was coming. I'm sorry."

I believe him.

I also believe there's no need for Bayne to apologize or beat himself up about it. He did what any good teammate would do.

And should do.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Things you may have missed at Charlotte Motor Speedway and in NASCAR in general on Monday as the motorsports world mourned the loss of Dan Wheldon:

• They had a test at CMS, preparing Sprint Cup cars for next year's switch from carburetors to electronic fuel injection, otherwise known as EFI, as was on the hood of most cars. About a dozen teams participated and the media actually took an EFI 101 class with professor Doug Yates of Yates-Roush Engines.

There was no final exam, thank goodness.

The test was a big deal in that NASCAR finally is putting, as Yates said, the stock back in stock cars. You won't be able to tell much of a difference from the stands. The speeds will be about the same and the noise is just as loud.

Fuel mileage should be somewhat better, but teams won't be able to figure out all the issues with that until NASCAR decides on the final design of the tank.

Otherwise, this is more to make manufacturers happy. Automakers long have wanted the cars on the racetrack to simulate the cars in the showroom.

• Kasey Kahne got behind the wheel of a Hendrick Motorsports car that he'll be driving next year for the first time. He said there were more differences than he expected from the Red Bull Racing cars he currently drives.

Some might have to do with it being an EFI car.

"The power, the on and off throttle, and the way the engine reacts to what you do with your foot, to me that was the biggest difference," Kahne said.

• Jeff Gordon unveiled at the nearby Jeff Gordon Children's Hospital the "Sounds of Pertussis" quilt in his continued effort to educate the masses on whooping cough.

The "Race to Blanket America" quilt has 2,400 squares designed by individuals with the March of Dimes donating $1 for each square up to $10,000 (for more information, go to www.SoundsofPertussis.com). Gordon and his wife, Ingrid, designed one square and Gordon designed another.

"All of us take calculated risks in our lives to some degree," Gordon said. "But when it comes to our children, I don't think that's anything we can afford to be risky on."

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Jimmie Johnson pulled out his phone on Tuesday to show that his alarm always is set on 6:48 a.m. He usually sets the microwave for a minute and 48 seconds, and he has been known to share what his fortune cookie says.

I once saw the five-time defending Sprint Cup champion go back to a candy basket at a restaurant in Daytona Beach half a dozen times until he got one close to the blue color of his No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet.

But Johnson insists he's not superstitious, particularly about being on the upcoming cover of Sports Illustrated.

"There's a curse?" Johnson asked a group of reporters Tuesday during an appearance at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Well, yeah. It's kind of famous as far as curses go.

It began in 1954 with Atlanta Braves third baseman Eddie Matthews. Shortly after he appeared on the cover in the magazine's inaugural year, Mathews broke his hand and missed seven games.

The list goes on and on. In 1958, race driver Pat O'Conner was killed on the first lap of the Indianapolis 500 four days after appearing on the cover. In 1956, Indy 500 winner Bob Sweikert was killed in a Sprint Car crash three weeks after his cover shot.

More recently, Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler appeared on the Jan. 19, 2011 cover and promptly injured his knee in a loss to the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game.

Not everyone falls victim to this curse, mind you. Michael Jordan appeared on the cover 49 times and did pretty well for himself with six NBA titles and countless MVP awards.

"It didn't seem to bother me in '06 or '07, or whenever we were on it," Johnson said.

Actually, it was November 2008. By then Johnson had won his third straight title.

This appearance, though, comes in the heat of a playoff run, which Johnson is handling just fine with consecutive second- and first-place finishes to move within four points of leader Carl Edwards.

"There is nothing to worry about," said Johnson, destined to be one of the Hall's most prestigious members. "If I lose the championship it has nothing to do with being on the cover of a magazine. It means we didn't do our jobs or had some bad luck.

"I think talk about a curse thing is a bunch of B.S."

Forget Talladega. Forget Martinsville.

The real wild card in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup will come in the next-to-last race at the newly paved, newly reconfigured Phoenix International Raceway.

As Carl Edwards said, "It could shake everything up."

Sprint Cup teams spent Tuesday and Wednesday testing on the one-mile track and its new ice-smooth surface after changes that added banking up to a 12-degree tilt have made years of notes obsolete.

The difference could mean five-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, who dominated on the old surface with four wins and an average finish of 4.8 in 16 starts, may not be so dominant. It could give the nod to another Chase driver who traditionally has struggled there.

Despite all the testing, we just won't know everything there is to know -- from how many grooves will open up to how cars will react going two-wide in places they couldn't before -- until there's actual competition.

Sprint Cup Series director John Darby described it best.

"I liken it a lot to being able to go through my front door at night in pitch darkness and be able to walk through my living room, negotiate my way into the kitchen, find the light switch without any interference until the night that I come home that it's dark and my wife has rearranged the furniture in the living room and I trip and fall halfway through," he said. "It's the same thing."

In other words, a driver could trip going through the new dogleg at speeds expected to be 2-3 mph faster than the old configuration and throw the whole Chase into a frenzy.

We just won't know.

"Whenever you introduce something new like this new surface and new track layout there are going to be guys that figure it out quickly and guys that struggle," Edwards said during Wednesday's test session. "And it's not necessarily the guys you suspect.

"This race, we're all going to come here with a little nervousness, trepidation. … The way this new surface is, it's unforgiving, so there could be accidents and things that happen we don't usually see at Phoenix."

There are all sorts of unknowns. Will a second groove rubber in as NASCAR hopes to create with vehicles on the track between now and the November race? And what happens on a double-file restart? How will aero issues come into play? How will the hard tires being used to protect against overheating and extensive wear often seen on new surfaces impact strategy on the final call?

"I don't think you can really predict how racing is going to be," said Edwards, tied with Kevin Harvick for the points lead heading into Sunday's race at Kansas. "It's truly unpredictable."

Jeff Gordon said it was "edgy" on his initial trips around the new surface. Although it got better, he acknowledged there are new challenges that everybody will have to deal with in November that can't be worked out in a test.

"That's the thing, when we come here to these tests, we're all trying to learn things, get laps, do our own thing," Gordon said. "We're not racing. We're not getting side-by-side with other cars."

There may be more risks at PIR than there are at Talladega where the so-called "Big One" can happen at any moment, more than at Martinsville where the tight confines on the half-mile track often create havoc.

If the Chase remains as tight as it is now -- nine drivers separated by 19 points -- it likely won't be after Phoenix.

"There are opportunities here for problems that we haven't seen at this racetrack," Edwards said. "I don't know how all of these problems will work out. Double-file restarts with 20 [laps] to go, the second race from the end of the Chase, no telling what's going to happen.

"That's not necessarily good for the racers, but it's good for the fans. It's going to be a little bit stressful."

Wild cards usually are.

And Phoenix now may be the biggest in the Chase.

DOVER, Del. -- Brad Keselowski didn't know what "dead weight" Tony Stewart got rid of last week, but his mischievous smile suggested he had a few ideas. Dale Earnhardt Jr. hadn't even heard of the issue that the points leader strangely brought up after his win at New Hampshire.

"I wonder what he did?" Earnhardt said Friday.

Told Stewart wouldn't say, Earnhardt laughed and said, "Maybe I should go ask. … I don't know what he did, whether he broke up with his girlfriend or fired somebody."

We've ruled out fired somebody.

But everything else is open season since Stewart isn't talking about the subject he initiated by saying, "We got rid of some dead weight earlier this week, so it made it a lot easier. It's been a big weight lifted off our shoulders. Just sometimes you have to make adjustments in your life, and we did that and it has definitely helped."

And then he said, "We're just going to leave it at that."

But people are curious, so here's my list of 10 things Stewart might have gotten rid of:

1. His girlfriend, Jessica Zemken: The World of Outlaws and sprint car driver is the most popular answer. She had a slew of consoling messages posted on her Facebook fan page that no longer are there, fueling that speculation.

2. His platinum membership at Dairy Queen: Stewart's weight battle is no secret, as is his love of extra thick chocolate milkshakes from the DQ in Columbus, Ind. And these cars do run better when they are lighter.

3. His attitude toward the media: We can't all be idiots as Stewart has called us the past two weeks.

4. Any thoughts he might have had to replace crew chief Darian Grubb with former crew chief Greg Zipadelli: Not saying Stewart doesn't miss Zipadelli, with whom he won titles in 2002 and 2005 at Joe Gibbs Racing, but it's hard to knock the guy who has led him to consecutive Chase wins.

5. Back hair: It has been since 2008 that Stewart, as part of a charity bet/deal with Kevin Harvick, had his back waxed on live radio. Again, these cars run better with less weight.

6. Danica Patrick: OK, he's not that big of an idiot. Patrick, who will drive a partial Sprint Cup schedule for Stewart next year, is a money maker.

7. Any aspirations to replace Goodyear with Hoosier: We can't forget this line by Stewart in 2009: "Same stuff that we always talk about every year, failures Goodyear has. I think that's part of their marketing campaign; the more we talk about it, the more press they get."

8. His pet monkey: Nah, Stewart gave Mojo to the Louisville Zoo a few years ago.

9. All the Schlitz in his house : Are you kidding?

10. His dream of being NASCAR's Most Popular Driver: Well, there is that chance as long as the media isn't voting.

Or this could be Stewart's sick sense of humor to get us all talking about something other than his leading the points.