Would third title elevate Stewart to fourth all time?

Petty. Earnhardt. Gordon.

Stewart?

Maybe, should Tony Stewart go on to win his third championship in NASCAR's premier series. Ranking the greatest drivers ever is far from a simple or exact thing -- most of them have competed in different eras, with different rules, in different cars, and under different point systems, variables that allow plenty of room for argument. It's never easy or really fair to compare drivers who didn't compete against one another at the peak of their careers, yet we can't help but do it anyway.

So an off weekend, with the Nationwide cars racing in Canada and Sprint Cup drivers lounging on various Caribbean beaches, seems the perfect time to ask the question: would a third title, for a team he basically rebuilt, rank Stewart among the greatest of all time?

First, let's address the top three. Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon, as the only men to each have at least four championships on NASCAR's premier circuit, are generally regarded as the sport's holy trinity. As always, there's an argument to be made.

David Pearson has 105 career race wins, second only to Petty's 200. He also has three titles, but he ran a number of part-time seasons for the Wood Brothers, and might very well have more championships had he competed in the full schedule. But he didn't, and so the exclusive membership of the Four or More Club remains. Of course, that's not to say someone else won't get in -- Stewart in upcoming years, or Jimmie Johnson this season. But that's another topic for another time.

Which brings us to the five drivers who currently own three championships: Johnson, Pearson, Lee Petty, Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip. Each of these men stand out for a different reason -- Yarborough and Johnson as the only drivers to win three titles consecutively, Lee Petty as patriarch of the Petty Enterprises team that would become the most successful in NASCAR history, Pearson with all those aforementioned race wins, and the unabashed Waltrip as one of the sport's first genuine media stars.

If you're ranking drivers, and you believe that championships are truly the barometer by which greatness is measured, then one of these guys has to be No. 4.

Then there's Stewart, who has two NASCAR championships under two different point systems to go along with a title in the IndyCar Series. He's been the class of the Sprint Cup field all season, with three race wins (one off the circuit lead shared by Kyle Busch and Mark Martin), to go with a series-best 13 top-fives, 18 top-10s and average finish of 8.7. (Continued)