OPINION

By Reid Spencer

updated 8:52 a.m. ET Aug. 19, 2008

One step ahead of Barack Obama and John McCain, Tony Stewart has picked his running mate.

Stewart announced Friday at Michigan International Speedway, the weekend home-away-from-home for NASCAR dads, that Ryan Newman will join him at Stewart-Haas Racing next year.

From a political standpoint, as well as from a racing point of view, the choice is a safe one for Stewart.

Rather than make a concession to geographical balance, Stewart chose a fellow Hoosier to run with him next year. That all but guarantees a strong performance in Indiana, which annually hosts NASCAR's second-most prestigious race.

Stewart and Newman have much in common, from their love of fishing (which will help enormously with the "Field & Stream" constituency) to their shared interest in raising deer (which all but guarantees their popularity with the PETA crowd).

No one can point to a lack of experience on the part of either driver. Now in his 10th full season of Sprint Cup racing, Stewart has 32 wins and two championships. Newman has 43 poles to go with his 13 victories and is the reigning champion of the Daytona 500.

Newman and Stewart are tenaciously competitive, as they have demonstrated repeatedly on the racetrack. But the two drivers have complementary assets, too.

Newman, a married man, brings stability to a pairing that includes Stewart, one of stock car racing's most eligible bachelors. Though Stewart has more Cup victories, Newman is the better qualifier, a talent that will come in handy if Haas CNC lame duck Scott Riggs can't keep the Chevrolet earmarked for Newman next year in the top 35 in the owners points standings.

Newman is well aware that only the top 35 are guaranteed starting spots in the first five Cup races of the 2009 season.

In the past, the relationship between the two drivers has had its rough spots. In July 2006, when they were both campaigning in New Hampshire, Stewart raced side-by-side against the lapped car of Newman in the early stages of the Lenox Industrial Tools 300. Newman slipped in Turn 3, the cars collided, and Stewart lost an excellent chance to win the race.

That incident, more than any other, cost Stewart a place in the 2006 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. In assessing the wreck, Stewart was unrelenting in his criticism of his rival.

"He doesn't give anybody else a break, so I wasn't about to give him a break," Stewart said. "It's amazing how he expects you to let him by, when he doesn't show anybody else that same courtesy."

Since then, however, Stewart and Newman have been spending more time mending fences than knocking them down. Long gone is the edgy rhetoric of prior campaigns.

Asked whether driving for the same organization next year will influence the way he races against Stewart for the rest of the 2008 season, Newman replied, "Obviously, we're not going to work against each other, but we're not in a position to work for each other, either. It's a right-time, right-place, give-and-take type of situation -- no different than it ever has been."

"It's business as usual," Stewart concurred. "It's just about respect out there. We've always had respect for each other, even though we drove for different teams."

Rather than note that Stewart and Newman are starting to sound like consummate politicians, let's just wish them the best, and let the honeymoon begin.

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