Tony Stewart has been called a lot of things in his NASCAR career.

Most recently, he's been called "champ," for winning the 2002 Winston Cup championship.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, he's also been called "Terrible Tony," when his fiery temper has resulted in confrontations on and off the racetrack with other drivers as well as journalists.

But now we can call Stewart something that, while it may seem to fly in the face of his occasionally tempestuous ways, begins a whole new chapter in his high performance life.

Introducing Tony Stewart, teacher and coach.

He won't be taking chalk to a blackboard or handing out demerits and hallway passes, but Stewart will be an educator nonetheless as one of the guiding hands in the development of potentially one of NASCAR's next stars, J.J. Yeley.

Yeley won three different USAC championships this year, capturing the Silver Crown, Midget and Sprint Car titles, equaling the feat that Stewart became the first driver to ever accomplish back in 1995. Yeley dominated all three classes in 2003, winning 24 races this season.

After taking most of his fellow drivers to school, Yeley, 27, has been promoted to a new classroom of sorts. He recently signed with Joe Gibbs Racing and will embark on a new racing career in 2004. He'll drive in a mixture of ARCA, Busch and Nextel Cup races, in preparation for an eventual full-time foray into Cup racing.

And serving as Yeley's mentor will be none other than Stewart, who plans to impart many of the lessons he's learned en route to becoming one of the top drivers in Cup racing.

"Tony was a very good person for people to talk to about my personality and my behaviors on the racetrack," Yeley said of the role Stewart played not only in owning a USAC team, but also of his influence in convincing Gibbs to sign him to a development contract.

"(Stewart) basically told them this is the next guy in USAC that needs a chance, that he's a great race car driver. It was enough for those guys to say to come down and tour our shop and we'll meet with you. I'm just fortunate to get the opportunity to run for such a class act. I'm just looking forward to trying to build a good relationship with them."

Added Stewart, "It's a new venture for him, it's something he doesn't have any experience in. … There's just a lot of questions in his mind that he doesn't have answers to, and he'll continue to have those questions until he gets on the racetrack and actually gets a chance to race. I don't think it's so much about his ability to go out there and do a good job as it is about what's it's going to be like and is he going to be able to do this, a lot of questions that he won't be able to answer until he gets in the car."

	“	When Tony has an interest in somebody, then he kind of goes all-out. I think he has tremendous interest in J.J., pushed him very hard to us (to sign) and did a great job in analyzing J.J. ”
		— Joe Gibbs on Tony Stewart's interest in J.J. Yeley

Not only did Stewart own all or part of the three different cars Yeley drove to those USAC crowns, now he'll have an even greater impact on Yeley's future career as a coach. While some critics may think Stewart doesn't have the patience to nurture and instruct a budding NASCAR star like Yeley, team owner Joe Gibbs thinks otherwise.

"I think Tony can be a great coach," said Gibbs, who knows quite a bit about coaching, having led the NFL's Washington Redskins to four Super Bowl appearances before becoming a full-time NASCAR team owner more than a decade ago. "I've watched Tony and he'll take to certain people. And if that's the case, I've seen him go to bat for them and help them in his career, try to help them negotiate their salaries -- he helped negotiate J.J.'s.

"When Tony has an interest in somebody, then he kind of goes all-out. I think he has tremendous interest in J.J., pushed him very hard to us (to sign) and did a great job in analyzing J.J. I think he's going to make a real investment in it and I think he'll be a great help."

Gibbs is not surprised that Stewart has gladly accepted the role of Yeley's mentor.

"If you watch him, like with his own racing teams, he gets all carried away with it; he loves it," Gibbs said of Stewart. "He loves going to the racetrack. Tony's all racing. He wants to race something every night. He gets a big kick out of young guys and takes a personal interest in them. He really gets involved in their careers."

A good example of that was the way Stewart shepherded Yeley during this past USAC season. Even if he was hundreds of miles away at a Winston Cup event, Stewart constantly burned up the phone lines, offering Yeley advice and instruction -- and a bit of the same brand of competitive philosophy that we've come to know so well from Stewart in Cup racing.

"I told (Yeley) you can't sit there worrying about the points every night," Stewart said. "A driver with J.J.'s talent, when he shows up at the racetrack, all he cares about is winning the race. He doesn't care about points. He's sitting there worrying only about what he has to do to win the race. I told him that if he wins races, the points will take care of themselves, and that's exactly what he did all year."

Yeley would be hard-pressed to find two better teachers as Stewart and Gibbs to instruct him on the finer points of stock-car racing.

"It's nice having somebody, and I had Bobby Labonte to ask questions to when I came into the Busch Series," Stewart said. "A lot of times, Bobby would come over and check on me, ask if I was alright and whether I had any questions. I just know how comforting a feeling that was to have a teammate that was willing to do that, and I look forward to doing the same (for Yeley)."

Added Gibbs, "(Yeley has) almost the identical same background that Tony Stewart had. … We felt it was good to invest in him, and he definitely has achieved more than we ever dreamed of. Like Tony, we started looking at (Yeley) as somebody we'd like to bring along. The farther we went, the more we became convinced … that J.J. was a good fit for us."

Yeley will also follow a lesson plan similar to the one Stewart has written for his own career. Like Stewart, he gives every bit of himself and his full attention to being the best.

"To have a season like I had this year, to win a bunch of races and to win the Triple Crown, I know that I need to make that next step and give it my full concentration," Yeley said. "That's going to be my biggest plan, to learn as much about the cars as quick as I can.

"I've been given a great opportunity by Joe Gibbs Racing, and I want to make the most of it."

And with a guy like Stewart teaching him the ABCs of stock-car racing, Yeley is likely to make the grade fairly quickly.

"I've got a lot of respect for J.J. and truly believe he's going to be as good of a champion and win as many races as I've won in Winston Cup in my career," Stewart said. "We don't want somebody who's just going to ride around. We want a guy who's going to be competitive and win races, help us take our program to the next level, and we feel J.J.'s that guy."

Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at Motorsportwriter@MSN.com.