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"&amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s a good time around here?&amp;quot;  Asks Tony Stewart, a crooked smile on his face. The assorted handlers, GM engineers, and track-safety officials all go weird. Who said anything about lap times?  Stewart&amp;#039;s job today is simply to help us suss out the all-new 2014 Chevrolet Corvette. Any new Vette is a special occasion, but when this one debuted in January, we got the feeling that the Corvette was finally a no-excuses sports car. No more, &amp;quot;Sure, the 911 feels better, but the Chevy crushes it for twenty grand less.&amp;quot; No more, &amp;quot;God, those seats suck.&amp;quot; America&amp;#039;s sports car is ready to be judged. And who better to do that than a guy who not only lacks a brain-to-mouth filter, but is also America&amp;#039;s greatest active racing driver? The &amp;quot;here&amp;quot; in this equation is GM&amp;#039;s nutty, custom-built road course at its massive provingground complex in Milford, Michigan. The track\u2014which goes by the lame name of MRC, for Milford Road Course\u2014is legitimately insane. Sweeping, hairy-fast corners; blind crests; Armco inches from the driving surface and almost no runoff. Shoved through the General Motors bureaucracy by former exec (and R&amp;amp;amp;T columnist) Bob Lutz in 2003, MRC is so outrageous that only 35 of GM&amp;#039;s 200,000 employees are allowed to drive it flat-out. Those so-called Level 3 drivers prove their mettle by posting a lap time within one percent of the company hotshoe, Corvette engineer Jim Mero. It works out to roughly one minute and 58 seconds. Stewart, after just five laps on America&amp;#039;s N\u00FCrburgring, wants to know where he stands.  Cut back an hour. Stewart arrives at MRC. He&amp;#039;s wearing the NASCAR off-duty uniform: blue jeans, running shoes, a black team shirt with sponsor embroidery, wraparound Oakleys. Other than the touch of gray at his temples, there&amp;#039;s no outward clue that he&amp;#039;s 42 years old. He&amp;#039;s undoubtedly a star to the assembled crowd, and his warmth seems genuine. But you can tell from the way he keeps turning his head toward the Vette that he&amp;#039;s struck by it.  The singular car parked trackside wears a deep emerald-green paint job. The hue is called Lime Rock Green, a version of British Racing Green that&amp;#039;s been infused with a carpet of fat-flake metallic. It&amp;#039;s pretty but oddly subdued, even on this big-sky day, until you see it through polarized glasses, at which point it positively explodes. The new body, composed of carbon fiber and various types of plastic, looks even better up close, the angular mashup switching to a mass of one or two great lines. Stewart runs his hand along the car&amp;#039;s shoulder, stopping at the grille over the left-rear tire.  &amp;quot;That feeds air to the transmission cooler,&amp;quot; says Tadge Juechter, the Corvette&amp;#039;s chief engineer. Like Stewart, Juechter is no wallflower. A GM lifer, he started his career as a co-op in the raucous Lordstown assembly plant and made his way to the Corvette team in 1993. As Juechter explains the Vette&amp;#039;s technical details\u2014the new stiffer aluminum frame, the electrically assisted steering, the two sole parts that are carried over from the sixth-gen car (cabin air filter and a roof latch)\u2014his obsession is obvious. There&amp;#039;s nothing about the Corvette that this man doesn&amp;#039;t know intimately. Stewart smiles and nods.   The pair split and get in the car, Stewart falling into the driver&amp;#039;s seat. The interior is great, finally, a sea of aluminum, nappa leather, and rich screens. It actually feels like it&amp;#039;s worth something and not an afterthought. I kneel on the hot pavement next to the driver&amp;#039;s door just in time to hear Stewart say, &amp;quot;Mine&amp;#039;s going to be black.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;So you&amp;#039;re going to get one?&amp;quot; Juechter asks.  &amp;quot;Already ordered. Actually three, one for me, and two more for a couple of guys who work for me. It&amp;#039;s only the second car I bought brand new.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What options?&amp;quot; I interject.  &amp;quot;All of them. Duh.&amp;quot; Sitting here, jawing about cars, it&amp;#039;s all too easy to think Stewart is just another car guy. He&amp;#039;s not. He&amp;#039;s now a mogul. In addition to being part owner of his NASCAR team, Stewart-Haas Racing, he owns USAC and World of Outlaws teams, a motorsports-PR firm, and a radio-controlled-car company. He has a penchant for saving ancient dirt tracks and owns Ohio&amp;#039;s legendary half-mile Eldora Speedway, as well as a part interest in both Macon Speedway and Paducah International Raceway. And when you work for Stewart\u2014or I should say, work hard for Stewart\u2014you might just get a Corvette. He&amp;#039;s that kind of guy.  It&amp;#039;s also easy to forget that Stewart is one of the most interesting characters in motorsport. He once traveled with a monkey. He steals every interview he&amp;#039;s in and once referred to Kurt Busch as the yappy guy in high school who deserves a regular wailing. Unlike most NASCAR drivers, he seems to operate outside the mind-numbing sameness that permeates the sport. And he&amp;#039;s a regular in NASCAR&amp;#039;s off-track brawlfest, most recently with 23-year-old Joey Logano, who blocked him in a race at Auto Club Speedway. (Stewart, when asked why he was angry: &amp;quot;Dumb little sumbitch runs us clear down into the infield. He wants to talk shit about everybody else, and he&amp;#039;s the one driving like a little prick. I&amp;#039;m gonna bust his ass.&amp;quot;) As much as we admire Stewart&amp;#039;s honesty and refusal to toe the line, those antics can mask the real reason we love the guy: He&amp;#039;s a wheelman. He&amp;#039;s won three NASCAR championships, one in IndyCar, many more in lower feeder series, and on this day, he&amp;#039;s just off a win at Dover. In 2007, he traded cars with McLaren F1 driver Lewis Hamilton at Watkins Glen, in the rain. The video is telling, and that&amp;#039;s all you really need to know.  If his performance and character weren&amp;#039;t enough to declare Stewart a kind of latter-day A. J. Foyt, there&amp;#039;s also this: He&amp;#039;ll race 115 times this year alone, and most of the time you&amp;#039;ll never hear about it. In addition to a year&amp;#039;s worth of NASCAR races\u201438 events over the longest season in professional sports\u2014he&amp;#039;ll more than double his track time in winged sprint cars and modifieds on small dirt and asphalt ovals.  This is no grab for attention: He enters lesser-known events under a pseudonym to avoid the circus. The guy&amp;#039;s addicted. Ask him why he wants to drive so much, and he shrugs, as if to say, &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s a stupid question. I can race. I do. Who wouldn&amp;#039;t?&amp;quot;  Back in the car, Juechter&amp;#039;s still talking. Stewart listens politely, but you can tell he&amp;#039;s getting itchy.   Barely two turns into Stewart&amp;#039;s first lap on a gnarly track he&amp;#039;s never seen, and I can hear tires howling from the pits. (Milford is so crammed with hills that you can rarely see more than one corner at a time.) A minute later, the Corvette rips by, its V-8 at full honk. So much for a reconnaissance lap. Early in his career, Stewart was nicknamed &amp;quot;Smoke&amp;quot; for ruthlessly punishing his tires. And because he appears to be genetically incapable of taking it easy.  Two laps later, he pits, a mile-wide grin on his face. &amp;quot;Did you hear me go through the grass over there?&amp;quot; Everyone nods. I climb in the passenger seat. (See sidebar: R&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s turn to drive the car, albeit mostly at Milford, will come a week later.)  Stewart immediately floors it and we plunge down the hill to the first corner. Rounding this tightening left-hander, Stewart&amp;#039;s already sliding the car, which feels taut, more stiffly sprung than the Corvette it replaces. And praise the Lord, Juechter and crew have finally given the car proper, rigid seats. The side bolsters hold me in place well enough that I attempt to scrawl notes. These musings will later prove unreadable save one word: aggressive.  MRC&amp;#039;s first section contains a pair of third-gear hills with apexes at each crest. These rises are so steep that you don&amp;#039;t see where the track goes until the summit. I&amp;#039;ve been around MRC enough to know the layout, so I realize\u2014before Stewart\u2014that he&amp;#039;s going too fast as we charge up the first hill. I can&amp;#039;t help shoving my feet to the firewall, hoping for an invisible brake pedal.  We drift to the right, heading straight for the knee-high grass that lines the asphalt. He hasn&amp;#039;t lifted. Just when my back starts to tense up, he jumps off the throttle for a millisecond before getting back on it. Damn this guy. The car just brushes the tall grass. Maybe a second or two later, we dive into a steeply banked left-hand bowl, a Talladega-esque oval, but one small enough to be stuffed into your living room. Thanks to the traction-enhancing effects of the banking, the car generates over 2 g&amp;#039;s in this turn, which means my head effectively doubles in weight. I can&amp;#039;t keep my helmet from banging the window, but I can&amp;#039;t stop giggling, either.   A lap or so later, Stewart&amp;#039;s hit a groove. He doesn&amp;#039;t just drive aggressively, but decisively. In some of the longer corners, where the car is cutting a broad, fast arc, his style is what I&amp;#039;ve come to call the American way of driving. The Europeans constantly jiggle the wheel, cranking in more steering to get the required yaw and then quickly correcting. These are small movements, maybe 10 degrees each, but the drivers stay busy. Stewart, by contrast, turns in and holds the wheel in one place. The car still dances around, but I can&amp;#039;t see him doing anything to cause it. I yell a few questions, but Stewart waves his hand. &amp;quot;After 35 years of racing, I can&amp;#039;t hear a thing.&amp;quot;  We pull into the pits. Stewart stays in the car, and a small crowd forms by the driver&amp;#039;s door. Everyone waits for him to break the tension. &amp;quot;God, I love this thing!&amp;quot; The air, somehow removed from the scene, comes roaring back.  &amp;quot;How&amp;#039;d it feel?&amp;quot; someone asks.  &amp;quot;I can get the thing turned and adjust the attitude with my feet, the brake and throttle. That&amp;#039;s amazing. I&amp;#039;ve never driven a street car like that. &amp;quot;I like that as soon as I picked up some understeer, I could feel it through the steering wheel. Hydraulic steering [might] bring more feeling into it, but this system is much better than I anticipated.&amp;quot; We go out for another few laps. He&amp;#039;s smoother now, more sure of the line, and we&amp;#039;re sliding a lot less. When the tail steps out, Stewart holds there, not rushing any correction. &amp;quot;I like cars that are freer than most,&amp;quot; he says.   I&amp;#039;m usually a terrified passenger, but I find myself enjoying the ride. There&amp;#039;s something about Stewart&amp;#039;s style that makes it obvious he has everything handled. We pull in.  Climbing out, Stewart jokes, &amp;quot;Here&amp;#039;s what pisses me off. I&amp;#039;m over here workin&amp;#039;, and he&amp;#039;s writin&amp;#039; stuff down! Like, maybe I need a new day job.&amp;quot; And then he asks, almost absentmindedly, &amp;quot;Did you get a lap time?&amp;quot; No one got a lap time. We don&amp;#039;t even have a stopwatch. Alex MacDonald, a Corvette engineer, suggests we use our phones. The track is reopened. The Vette&amp;#039;s stability control, formerly on (&amp;quot;The car&amp;#039;s like, &amp;#039;I got this ...&amp;#039; &amp;quot;), is shut off.  His first lap is a 2:00.7. &amp;quot;We take two days to get down to the target time,&amp;quot; says MacDonald, one of GM&amp;#039;s top guns. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s had, what, six laps?&amp;quot; Stewart does one more and comes in. His best time is two minutes flat. We debate who&amp;#039;s going to break the news.  &amp;quot;Do I get my license? Did I make the cut?&amp;quot; MacDonald hedges. &amp;quot;We haven&amp;#039;t tested this particular car, but we think you&amp;#039;d need about a one-minute, 58-second lap. You did two flat.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;So I need two seconds?&amp;quot; He shrugs and gazes back at the track. We all want him to go out again, but our time is up. He&amp;#039;ll race in Pennsylvania and Indiana in the next three days and then hit the NASCAR race that follows. Yet he&amp;#039;s apparently willing to add another duty.  &amp;quot;Any time you have somebody call in sick and I&amp;#039;m anywhere in the continental United States, call me. I&amp;#039;ll be right over.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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