NASCAR champion. Indy Racing League (IRL) champion. United States Auto Club (USAC) champion. Karting champion. From the beginning of his career more than a quarter century ago to his present role as driver of the #20 Home Depot Chevrolet in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series, Tony Stewart has proven to be a champion every step of the way.

The Columbus, Ind., native has scored a total of nine driving championships since he first wheeled a go-kart at a Westport, Ind., race track in 1978. But it was his NASCAR championship in 2002 that Stewart puts first on his list of accomplishments

“If I had to retype my resume tomorrow, I’d put my NASCAR championship at No. 1,” said Stewart. “All of the championships I’ve been a part of were hard to acquire. None of them were easy. They had their unique set of circumstances, obstacles and challenges to overcome. But my heart tells me that this championship – right here in NASCAR – was my greatest accomplishment in racing.

“With the caliber of teams, car owners, crew chiefs and drivers that are in this series, that alone makes you respect this championship. It doesn’t take away from any of the other ones I’ve earned, but this is one that’s so pressure packed it’s an obstacle to itself. That’s something I never had with the other championships. This deal is quite a bit different. You do a lot more work here, but that’s what makes this one so special.”

Even with Stewart’s experience of winning three karting championships, four USAC titles and one IRL crown, the 36-race grind that comprises the Nextel Cup schedule makes the series championship one of the most difficult and elusive in all of motorsports, regardless of one’s racing background. Still, Stewart earned his NASCAR crown in just his fourth year of Cup competition, joining only six other active drivers to have won the series championship – Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte, Dale Jarrett, Terry Labonte, Rusty Wallace and Bill Elliott.

Title defense proved elusive in 2003, with Stewart finishing seventh in points with two wins and one pole. The 2004 season mirrored his post-championship year, as Stewart finished sixth in points, again with two wins. And while the past two seasons were not what he had expected performance-wise, it was everything he expected outside of the race car.

“Winning the championship was like having a weight lifted from our shoulders,” said Stewart. “We didn’t have to answer the question, ‘When are you going to win a championship?’ We proved to everyone that we could win one, so the past couple of years have just felt more fun. But we’re still competitive people and we still want to win.

“Every day when I go home, and every morning when I leave the house, I get to see a Winston Cup championship trophy on the mantel. It’s something I’m very proud of. Winning that first one is always the hardest, because you’ve never really been in that position before and it makes you so nervous. But now we have that experience behind us, and we know what to expect. I think I can speak for everyone on the team when I say we all want another championship trophy on our mantle.”

But as each year passes, earning another championship becomes more and more difficult.

“The competition level is so tight now,” said Stewart. “At the beginning of the year you used to be able to pick about five guys who you thought had a realistic shot at winning the championship. But now, you can pick anywhere from 10-12 guys who have a legitimate shot at the championship. If you have a good year and some luck goes your way, you can run for a championship.”

And that’s just what Stewart and his #20 Home Depot Racing Team look to in the future. But to understand the possibilities that lie in Stewart’s future, one must look to the past.

Stewart’s racing career began at age seven behind the wheel of a go-kart, with his father, Nelson, serving as car owner and crew chief.

“He never let me settle for second,” said Stewart of his dad, who still frequents races whenever his schedule permits. “He didn’t like it when we ran second, and he knew that I didn’t like it when we ran second. If he saw that I wasn’t giving 100 percent, then he was on me pretty hard about it. He pushed me to be better.

“He never pressured me to be the best race car driver in the world, but he did pressure me to be the best race car driver that I could be. He never compared me to anybody else. He expected that what I could do was what I could do. He never said that because this guy over here could do something that I should be able to do it, too. He pushed me hard, but he was fair about it. That’s probably why you see so much fire in me today, because he always wanted me to be the best that I could be.”

In 1980 at the age of eight, Stewart had won his first championship – a 4-cycle rookie junior class championship at the Columbus (Ind.) Fairgrounds. Two more karting championships followed, but this time on a national level – the 1983 International Karting Federation Grand National championship and the 1987 World Karting Association National championship.

By 1989, Stewart had begun the transition from go-karts to higher-horsepower, open-wheel machines. He raced Three-Quarter Midgets before turning his attention to the USAC ranks in 1991 where he won Rookie of the Year honors.

Stewart notched his first USAC championship in 1994 by winning five times in 22 starts in the National Midget category. It was a prelude to even bigger things, as 1995 was the year Stewart made USAC history by winning the Triple Crown. He won the National Midget, Sprint and Silver Crown titles all in the same year, a feat never accomplished by anyone before Stewart.

That success led to Stewart earning a ride in the fledgling IRL. After earning the Rookie of the Year award in 1996, Stewart won the series championship the following year.

While 1997 bore an IRL championship, it also bore the seeds to Stewart’s current NASCAR success. A slate of 22 NASCAR Busch Series races with Joe Gibbs Racing in 1998 prepared Stewart for his assault on the Cup ranks in 1999.

During that remarkable rookie season, where Stewart won three races and was crowned Rookie of the Year, he also competed in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. The grueling trek, known as “Double Duty,” saw Stewart compete in a Home Depot-sponsored Dallara Aurora IRL entry at Indianapolis before flying to Concord, N.C., to compete in the Coca-Cola 600 that evening in his Home Depot Pontiac. He became the first driver to complete both races in the same day, finishing ninth and fourth, respectively. All told, Stewart drove a total of 1,090 miles.

Stewart repeated this feat in 2001, when he drove a Target/Home Depot G-Force Aurora for Chip Ganassi at Indy. He bettered his mark from 1999 by finishing on the lead lap in sixth before jetting off to Charlotte for the Coca-Cola 600. He improved that finish as well, coming home third in the 600 miler. When it was all said and done, Stewart completed all 1,100 miles – breaking his own record for most racing miles driven in one day.

While it wasn’t a driving championship, Stewart earned another championship on the World of Outlaws circuit. His team – Tony Stewart Motorsports with driver Danny Lasoski – won the 2001 World of Outlaws championship in their rookie year. And in the three years since, they’ve been the runner-up to 19-time champ Steve Kinser.

In addition to being devoted to racing, Stewart is also devoted to philanthropy, so much so that he formed his own charitable foundation in 2003. Known simply as the Tony Stewart Foundation, its goal is to raise funds that will be primarily distributed to organizations that help care for critically ill children, as well as to lend support to families of race car drivers who have been injured in motorsports.

Stewart, single, makes his home in Cornelius, N.C., while also owning his boyhood home in Columbus. He has a sister, Natalie, who helps run the Tony Stewart Fan Club along with their mom – Pam Boas.