Tony Stewart to Honor 10-Years With Home Depot

The Home Depot entered NASCAR with a bang in 1999 as a sponsor for rookie Tony Stewart and rookie crew chief Greg Zipadelli.

Tony Stewart's No. 20 Toyota will sport a slightly different look when it takes to the track for this weekend's Sprint Cup Series race at Atlanta. Photo courtesy: Joe Gibbs Racing

ATLANTA - Tony Stewart's No. 20 Toyota will sport a slightly different look when it takes to the track for this weekend's Sprint Cup Series race at Atlanta.

The traditional orange and black colors of primary sponsor Home Depot will remain, but in celebration of the Atlanta-based company's 10-year anniversary as a sponsor and supporter of Stewart and Joe Gibbs Racing, a special paint scheme designed by one of The Home Depot's 350,000 associates will adorn the No. 20 machine.

In a company-wide contest that began on Dec. 17, 2007, and ended on Jan. 18, 2008, Home Depot associates were encouraged to design the car that Stewart would drive March 9 at Atlanta. From a total of 351 entries, the winning design came from the pen of Scott Foreman, a Pro Desk Sales Associate who works at The Home Depot in Brighton, Colo.

"I am absolutely thrilled to have been chosen for this contest. It's a dream of a lifetime for me," said Foreman, who will get to see his winning design in person as a VIP guest of the No. 20 Home Depot Racing Team.

"I've been a race fan my entire life. I actually grew up around the local tracks in Denver since both my dad and uncle raced when I was young. I've been a NASCAR fan ever since they began televising races back in the black-and-white TV days. Naturally, I've been drawing race cars since I was a kid, too. So this prize means more to me than you could ever imagine. It really is the dream of a lifetime."

The Home Depot entered NASCAR with a bang in 1999, as the world's largest home improvement specialty retailer became the Official Home Improvement Warehouse of NASCAR. Augmenting that platform, The Home Depot also signed to sponsor a newly formed second team of Joe Gibbs Racing with a rookie crew chief and a rookie driver who had made a name for himself in open-wheel race cars but was still a stock-car neophyte.

The partnership proved dynamic, as Stewart quickly showed that his four USAC championships and 1997 IRL IndyCar Series title would lead to championships in NASCAR.

With crew chief Greg Zipadelli, Stewart won the 1999 rookie of the year award on the heels of three wins and a fourth-place finish in the championship point standings. The wins kept coming in the seasons that followed and so did the championships, as Stewart and Zipadelli won series titles in 2002 and '05.

"When I first came to NASCAR, I just wanted to make it, let alone make it 10 years," said Stewart, whose 10-year tenure with Zipadelli forms the longest active driver/crew chief relationship in NASCAR. "It makes me very, very proud of both my relationship with everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing and at The Home Depot. They've been a great company to work for, and hopefully, we go another 10 years.

"We've been through a lot of highs and a lot of lows, but at the end of the day, we've had a lot of fun and we've won a lot of races and won two championships. I think we've had a very successful first 10 years."

Source: Joe Gibbs Racing

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