CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Greg Zipadelli’s first interview with Joe Gibbs Racing was over Sunday lunch at a local Cracker Barrel, where he went to discuss a crew opening on a team being built around Tony Stewart.

The conversation spilled out to the front porch of the restaurant, where Zipadelli and Jimmy Makar rocked in the trademark wooden chairs for close to four hours. When Makar finally got up to leave, he had no intention of offering Zipadelli the shock specialist job he was trying to fill.

Instead, Makar wanted Zipadelli — an unknown with just one season of Cup experience — to run the entire team.

“The more we talked about racing and what his beliefs were in racing, and the way we communicated, by the time that conversation was over, I came back and told Joe ‘Hey, this is a guy that I think can get the job done as a crew chief,”’ said Makar, now the senior vice president of racing operations at JGR.

“We could get a big-name crew chief, but I didn’t know that they would mesh with me. But Zip, we hit it off like we had known each other all our lives and I knew he was going to be perfect.”

The fit has been so perfect that Smoke, as Stewart is called, and Zippy head into this NASCAR season with the longest active driver-crew chief relationship in the Sprint Cup Series. Entering their 10th year together, the two have racked up two championships, 32 victories, 191 top-10s and have finished outside the top 10 in points only once.

A decade together in today’s NASCAR climate is almost unheard of. In comparison, Jeff Gordon has had three different crew chiefs since Ray Evernham stepped down in 1999, and Dale Jarrett has had at least 11 crew chief changes in the past five seasons.

But what makes the Stewart and Zipadelli pairing remarkable is that the relationship hasn’t dissolved during 10 years of trials, tribulations, near self-destruction and a ton of self-reflection. And it’s held up in spite of Gibbs’ early doubts.

Gibbs initially didn’t think Zipadelli was the right hire for a temperamental new driver and an expanding race team. He wanted a veteran with the experience and patience to rein in the 28-year-old Stewart, who was moving to NASCAR after winning the Indy Racing League title.

He never imagined Makar would endorse a 31-year-old NASCAR newcomer who had honed his skills working on modifieds across the Northeast then as a crew chief in the developmental Busch North Series. Also working against Zipadelli was a quick temper that had earned him the nickname “Snapper,” further worrying Gibbs that he’d never fit with the acerbic Stewart.

“I was really panicked when we got Zippy,” Gibbs remembered. “He’s never been a crew chief, he’s young, Tony Stewart is young, and I am thinking to myself, ‘If I laid out the perfect plan, it would be to get an older more mature crew chief.’ So I was in shock. But then when I met with Zippy, I was just really at ease.”

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The relationship worked immediately, largely because Smoke and Zippy are essentially the same person. Both grew up in racing, working with their fathers on cars while spending most of their childhoods around the track.

It turned them into intense, competitive men who are consumed with racing. It’s never been about money or fame for either. Their common goal is to work hard to fulfill an insatiable desire for success at NASCAR’s top level.

They started out by agreeing give each other space. Zipadelli builds the cars, Stewart drives them and neither interferes with the other.

“We didn’t set out saying we are going to spend the next 10 years working together, but it’s happened and it’s worked,” Zipadelli said. “My personality of being somewhat controlling of the car, and his lack of wanting to be involved in it — there’s a mutual respect of ‘This is my area, this is his area.’

“I don’t tell him how to drive, and he just tells me what’s wrong with the car. That’s helped us.”

Their similarities stretch to their temperaments, and it took Zipadelli time to learn the patience he needs to work with the enigma that is Stewart. The driver is one of the most talented in NASCAR history, but also has a self-destructive side that could have destroyed the team many times.

From on-track incidents, temper tantrums that have drawn the ire of NASCAR, fans and the media, and his 2002 meltdown in which a demoralized Stewart punched a photographer after losing a race at his beloved Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Zipadelli has never turned his back on his driver.

“I don’t think either one of us has feelings. If something needs to be said, I can air it and I know that he’s not going to go home and take it personally,” Zipadelli said. “He may holler back, he may tell me I’m full of (it), he may disagree with it. But he will listen to me, he will take it to heart and he will learn from it — and vice versa.

“We have that relationship, we’ve been fortunate enough to have that openness and we know it’s not about feelings. You check them at the door when you get here.”

That comfort level took time to reach. Gibbs said there were races during the early years when driver and crew chief would be furious with each other for long stretches and wouldn’t speak to each other on the radio: “We’d go 50 laps without them talking to each other and I’d be going ‘Gosh, say something, will ya?”’