“As tough as you think you are, as cool as you think you can be, when it gets brought up every day, it’s a distraction.”

Zipadelli knows how tough it is to beat the best in the business, and right now the top competition is under the same JGR roof. Kyle Busch on Sunday won for the fourth time this season — a series best — and Denny Hamlin has been to Victory Lane once already.

To win their third title together, Stewart must settle his team and help put the focus back on winning.

“I can’t control this,” Zipadelli said. “I didn’t start it, but it’s certainly a little bit of a distraction and that’s just the way it is. The teams that don’t have distractions and are focused 110 percent, those are the teams that are tough to beat.”

In fairness to Stewart, there’s little he can do to control this rash of bad luck. It won’t matter if he signs a contract extension with Gibbs tomorrow or announces his intention to leave the team. If he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, he’s going to crash.

But it’s also not a reach to wonder if this sudden slide is at all related to his off-track negotiating. Team president J.D. Gibbs doesn’t think so, noting that Stewart and the No. 20 team usually perform at their highest when the chaos around them is greatest.

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Yet Gibbs admits the waiting game can be agonizing.

“There’s something sitting there. How long is it going to sit there? That’s frustrating and those guys want direction for the future,” Gibbs said.

So Stewart needs to get through his event at Eldora, where he hopes to raise $1 million to give to Kyle Petty toward construction on a new camp in Kansas City for chronically ill children. Then he needs to sort out his plans because dragging this out much longer might certainly sink his season.

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