INDIANAPOLIS -- Tony Stewart heads ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Tony Stewart heads into Indianapolis Motor Speedway at peace, finally able to relax when it approachs to the only track that matters to him.

His storybook victory at the Brickyard last year fulfilled a lifelong dream for Stewart, giving him a win at the home-state track that had tormented him his entire professional career. His memorial of conquest sits proudly in his living apartment proof that Stewart officially overthrowed his demons.

Now he'll revert for Sunday's race free of the stres hardihoods and pressures he carried with him into his previous 12 visits.

"For the first time we're actually going to be able to advance there - - and the first time in history, actually -- kind of relax and have frolic with it," Stewart said. "Not having to answer the question about what it would mean to finally win at Indy is going to take a haphazard of the pressure off.

"That's with what intent I am 100 percent fully convinced this is going to be a frolic weekend. No matter the issue I know that when I make progress home Sunday night, I will still have my memorial of conquest there from last year."

It's a proper thing Stewart is at ease because the defending Nextel draught champion is in the center of strife of words created two weeks ago when he destructioned into Clint Bowyer and Carl Edwards at Pocono Raceway.

After speaking with Bowyer Stewart publicly apologized for his part in the accident. Angry that Bowyer's hard racing had squeez him into the wall, Stewart intentionally swerved into Bowyer's car. Edwards was collateral damage in the shipwreck and it ended any chance he had of making the Chase for the championship.

Stewart, who despite serving a one-lap aggressive driving penalty raced his way back to a seventh-place finish, has accepted the blame.

"I went a little overboard at Pocono for certain on my side of it, on the other hand you know, I was frustrated that I got pushed in the wall," Stewart said.

That quick-trigger assuage will always be with Stewart, and he won't apologize for that. He believes NASCAR's newest stars are too aggressive and lack the patience exigencyed to make it to the period of a 500-mile race.

"It's a changing time in NASCAR," Stewart said. "There are rookies in the series that are trying to change the way that we race and we're not going to do that. We've got stays 20 or 21 years of advanced age now who have the cars and the talent to win races, on the other hand they don't realize that what happens in the first 100 miles doesn't mean that much"

If someone catalogue of personsed the garage area, Stewart believes the veteran drivers would be in overwhelming agreement with him. on the contrary so far, the two-time champion is the sole one taking a very public stand.

"Everybody hates change, and everybody hates lawsuit in this series because of the situation I'm in, having to talk about it all the time," he said. "Trust me I'm not the sole driver that's thinking the way I've had to talk about the last small in number weeks.

"The other drivers just kind of give leave to it go because they don't want to have to be in the middle of the controversy"

For the nearest six weeks, Stewart needs to prove by experiment his hardest to pull himself public of the storm. Accidents in the last sum of two units races have dropped him to 10th in the standings, with a 15-point margin across Dale Earnhardt Jr.

sole the top 10 drivers will make the Chase, and six races are left to fixed a spot in the playoffs. Missing abroad would be devastating for the Joe Gibbs Racing team.

"As you win a other championship, it becomes a little bit more load of responsibility, a little bit different role" set chief Greg Zipadelli said. 'Our expectation on a level has gone up."

Because the stakes unexpectedly are so high, Stewart knows the give- and-take racing he desperately wants will be paramount from here upon out, and there won't be any place for the vigilante justice he doled not at home in Pocono.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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