Tony Stewart (Left) is interviewed by SPEED's Wendy Venturini (Right). (Photo: LAT Photographic)

T. STEW DOWN UNDER — Just as he did last season, Tony Stewart plans to head to Australia soon after the NASCAR Sprint Cup season ends and do some sprint car racing, as well as just plain relaxing. “I get to get away from the media. For a whole month I get to race and I don’t have to do media at all,” said Stewart. “It’s just going over and relaxing. Its summer over there and I don’t have to sit around in the winter and not be able to be outside and I get to race and visit a real beautiful area so it’s the best of all worlds.”

Stewart, of course, raced open-wheel sprint cars long before he raced NASCAR Sprint Cup cars.

“You have got to remember I am going over for a long period of time and I am only running on the track five days,” said Stewart. “I am doing something that is totally different and it gets me away from this and it’s something I like to do and when I get off days it’s something that I want to do and it’s not like I feel like I have to go do it so it’s definitely what I want to do.”

KYLE LIKES BEING THE BOSS — Kyle Busch has made headlines for winning races and made headlines for his displays of emotion and temper when he doesn’t win races. But less conspicuous has been the fact that he’s built a championship-caliber NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team. Busch’s No. 18 Kyle Busch Motorsports Toyota Tundra is 120 points ahead of the Todd Bodine’s No. 30 Germain Racing Toyota in NCWTS owner points with just one race to go on the season. Not too shabby for a first-year team.

Friday night at Phoenix International Raceway, Busch finished second to fellow Sprint Cup regular Clint Bowyer in the Lucas Oil 150 Truck Series race. Frequently, when Busch fails to win in a Truck Series or NASCAR Nationwide Series race, he can be a difficult interview, as he proved a week earlier at Texas Motor Speedway.

But Friday at Phoenix, Busch’s dominant emotion was pride with his team, not disappointment in the race results.

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“Not having anything a year ago at this point and coming as far as we’ve come — it means quite a bit to myself and to Eric Phillips (crew chief) and Rick Ren (general manager) and all the families that we have that work for us,” said Busch of his truck team. “All the dedication that they give and the time that they’ve put in this year.”

For all intents and purposes, KBM didn’t even exist at this point last year. “Rick came on, he didn’t start until Dec. 7th (2009) because he decided he wanted a vacation before he got involved in starting a race team,” Busch recalled. “We had three guys working for us up until Christmas and then after Christmas, from Dec. 27th or whatever it was until New Year’s, we had about seven guys. Then we had 14 guys on Jan. 5th. We came from nothing. ... It’s come a long ways and it’s been a lot of hard work but yet there’s still a lot more work to do in order to get fully funded for next year.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.