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The hard part, Tony Stewart says about being a new NASCAR Sprint Cup owner, is learning the names of all his employees.

If only that were the biggest challenge.

Stewart, teammate Ryan Newman and the other 150 or so members of Stewart-Haas Racing are embarking on an odyssey few have gone.

They'll attempt to remake one of the least competitive full-time teams in recent years into a winning organization. They face this challenge as the dividing line between the sport's elite teams and the rest of the field grows wider.

Those top teams, though, could help Stewart succeed because they, in a way, are a part of this new team.

Stewart left Joe Gibbs Racing for this ride. Newman, the defending Daytona 500 champion, left Penske Racing South. Stewart's crew chief, Darian Grubb, came from Hendrick Motorsports. The team's director of competition, Bobby Hutchins, was a longtime Richard Childress Racing employee. Newman's crew chief, Tony Gibson, came from Dale Earnhardt Inc.

"You know, hopefully having that knowledge from the five of us &ellipses; there's things that we've seen that we like, there's things that we didn't like," Stewart says. "Being able to sit down all five of us and talk about that, that's really helped us get a direction of how we at least want to start.

"We don't expect it to be perfect right off the bat. You start with what you think is the best way to do things, and as you go, you make adjustments as you need to. To date right now, I feel like we've got a really good direction of how we do things."

If nothing else, the personnel changes should make this team better. Last year, when it was called Haas CNC Racing, it struggled to get one of its two cars in the top 35 in car owner points. That won't be a problem this year. The quest is to try to get either Stewart or Newman into the Chase.

Of course that shouldn't be a problem for most, if not all, of Hendrick Motorsports, which boasts a driver lineup of three-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the team's 50-year-old newcomer, Mark Martin.

Martin returns to a full-time ride after spending the past two seasons running a partial schedule. This likely will be Martin's last run at an elusive championship even though he won't address his future beyond this year.

He's too busy looking forward to this season to worry about anything beyond it.

Just as excited about this year, though, is Carl Edwards — the favorite of many to stop Johnson from scoring a record fourth consecutive series title.

"He was a championship type of a guy last year," car owner Rick Hendrick said of Edwards, who finished second in the Chase. "He just had a couple of bad breaks.

"I shook his hand at Homestead (after the season finale) and he said, "I can't wait until next year.' I knew what that meant.''

Focusing only on Edwards, though, ignores his talented teammates. Greg Biffle still seeks a Cup title that would make him the first driver in series history to win crowns in trucks, Nationwide and Cup. Matt Kenseth is a former champ and the only driver, other than Johnson, to make the Chase all five years. Kenseth will look to extend that streak with his third crew chief in the last three years.

Roush Fenway Racing also features David Ragan, considered by many to be one of the top young drivers, and Jamie McMurray.

It's not just Roush cars that could challenge. Kyle Busch looked as if he was headed for a runaway title until problems early in the Chase doomed him. The sting remains.

"Anything you ever work toward is for a championship, so it doesn't matter how many race wins you have at the end of your career, everybody always looks at the championships that you have been able to accumulate," Busch says. "If you haven't accumulated those then they look at race wins.

"You want to be a champion and for me, a champion in NASCAR's top series, the Sprint Cup Series, is ultimately what we look for every weekend. The championship is pretty much what you think more of than necessarily race wins. In the beginning of the year everybody is out for race wins in order to get those 10 bonus points for the start of the Chase. Once you get down to qualifying for the Chase, then it's about the championship and once you get down to the end of the year then it's about the championship."

That's the hope of all competitors, from Busch's teammate, Denny Hamlin, to Richard Childress Racing, which has placed three drivers in the Chase the past two years, and those that missed the Chase a year ago.

A title run is where Stewart hopes to be someday with his team. The question is how long will it take to get there?

Contact Dustin Long at 373-7062 or dustin.long@news-record.com