TALLADEGA, Ala. -- When he was all done with meeting the media Sunday prior to the Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway, J.D. Gibbs spotted Rick Hendrick in the garage area and threw his arm around Hendrick.

"Man, you only had to go through this for one year. I'm looking at two years of dealing with this stuff," said Gibbs, forcing a smile.

Smoke and Coach

Tony Stewart has won 32 races and two championships in the Cup Series for Joe Gibbs.

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The president of Joe Gibbs Racing was talking with the owner of Hendrick Motorsports about the suddenly very urgent contract negotiations with Tony Stewart, JGR's most successful and veteran driver. Stewart remains under contract through 2009, but revealed recently that he is considering options beyond that do not necessarily include continuing his employment at JGR.

Stewart has been with JGR since first coming to Cup racing in 1999. He has won 32 races and two championships (in 2002 and 2005) while driving the No. 20 car for the organization. He began Sunday's race on the front row after qualifying second behind pole-sitter Joe Nemechek, and entered seventh in the 2008 point standings. He finished 38th after a late-race crash resulted in a DNF (watch video), and lost two positions to ninth in driver points.

Stewart said he has been approached by multiple teams -- believed to be as many as five now -- that have talked with him about future employment. He admitted that he has been intrigued by the offers, which have included giving him an ownership piece of the pie.

Until Sunday, J.D. Gibbs and his father, team owner Joe Gibbs, had not met with the media to discuss the latest news involving their star driver -- having only released a statement briefly describing their position. They expanded on that at length Sunday.

Perhaps the most important point made was that owning a race team at JGR likely is not going to be an option for Stewart. Asked directly about that possibility, J.D. Gibbs replied: "Right now probably not ownership in Joe Gibbs Racing. I think our deal is set the way it is. I think we could do some stuff to help him get started with his own team if that's what he really wanted."

Stewart, however, had earlier indicated that he wasn't certain he would want to start his own team from scratch. The bottom line is that there appears to be a long way to go before Stewart makes up his mind -- a point Gibbs stressed when he joked with Hendrick on Sunday.

Hendrick signed Dale Earnhardt Jr. last year after Earnhardt decided to leave the company founded by his late father, Dale Earnhardt Inc. But Earnhardt was in the final year of his deal with DEI before reaching that decision; Stewart still has a full year to go beyond this one in his current deal with JGR.

"We kind of got our guys together at the race shop and said, 'Here's where we are, we are going to run as hard as we can the next two years with Tony and hopefully he'll feel like this is where he wants to retire,'" J.D. Gibbs said. "He's got a lot of options. Every time a race driver has a contract negotiation, stuff like this comes up.

"For us, we would love for him to retire here. All we can focus on is what we can do and that's winning races, championships -- and hopefully we can get this shored up with him and all the other guys on the team."

Both Gibbs and his father said that their belief is that Stewart, who will turn 37 on May 20, will want to finish his career wherever he has the best chance to win.

"Every decision I've ever seen him make is about winning races," Joe Gibbs said. "It's been that way since the beginning."

J.D. Gibbs added: "Number one with him is where you are going to perform the best and have the best chances to win championships and races. We feel like that will be here. If he feels like that will be somewhere else down the road, hey, we're open to that.

"But the reality is that is two years removed from now. We have to make sure to keep our guys and our team focused on the here and now."

J.D. Gibbs also dismissed the theory that Stewart, a longtime Chevrolet driver who owns Chevy race teams in other racing series, wants to get out of the Toyotas that JGR began driving this year.

"One of the first guys we went to in this whole deal about do we change or not was Tony," he said. "Tony said that if it was something that we thought we needed to do, then let's do it. ... At the end of the day, his loyalty is with Joe Gibbs Racing more so than with a manufacturer."

J.D. Gibbs admitted that the fact that Stewart's position has now been made public does add a sense of urgency to contract negotiations that began between JGR and Stewart last year.

"Obviously this has put a little more pressure on it, probably from the standpoint where now everybody knows about it and you have to work with that," the younger Gibbs said. "We try and do stuff out in the future. The farther out we can look in the future, the better for us.

"For us to be successful at JGR, it has to be a team package -- crew guys, crew chief, motors, cars and drivers are a huge part of that. If we aren't successful and you don't run well, you won't be here. There are no franchises. For us, Tony plays a huge role in that. Over the past 10 years, he has been awesome. We know that he's one of those guys who can get it done."

But can a contract get done between JGR and Stewart now? While Stewart said he wants to take his time and mull over all options before making his decision, J.D. Gibbs said he would press for a quicker conclusion.

"The sooner, the better," he said. "We were working on this last year some, so it's not like this is something we're just starting on. The sooner we could get this put to bed, the better."

Joe Gibbs expressed optimism that Stewart will remain at JGR. But he also seemed sadly resigned to the new reality that it's no longer an absolute certainty.

"I think the importance of what we've been able to do is kind of measured over the last 10 years," Joe Gibbs said. "We've got 32 wins together. That's hard to do. It's been a great ride and hopefully it will continue in the future."