CUP: Hoosier Dandy Stewart Satisfied With Third

Sprint Cup

CUP: Hoosier Dandy Stewart Satisfied With Third

Tony Stewart, a two-time Brickyard 400 winner, came home third this time...

Tom Jensen | Posted July 26, 2009 Speedway, IN

Tony Stewart is still seeking his first win of the 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

There was no storybook ending for Indiana native Tony Stewart this time around in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, no emotional triumph like when he won this race in 2005 and ’07.

Instead, Stewart put another solid building block in an excellent first season as co-owner/driver of the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet Impala. Stewart finished third at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon, his series-high 12th top-five finish of 2009. And he extended his NASCAR Sprint Cup points lead to 192 over race-winner Jimmie Johnson, who moved up to second in points ahead of Jeff Gordon.

Add it all up, and it was a solid day for Stewart.

“Pretty satisfied with it,” Stewart said after earning his fifth top-five finish in 11 Brickyard Cup starts. “Obviously you want to win here at Indy. You do every week. But we had a solid starting position, a good pit selection on pit road. We had one little hiccup in the pits. We got to the top three or four there pretty early. That was kind of our spot. We had one stop that got us back to seventh or eighth. We were able to get two of those spots pretty quick. It took the rest of the race to get the rest of the way up there.”

While Stewart’s result was good, in truth his car was never the equal of Johnson’s, runner-up Mark Martin’s or Juan Pablo Montoya’s Chevy, which led 116 of the first 125 laps before Montoya got caught speeding on pit road en route to finishing 11th.

“We just never really could mount a charge to Mark or Juan,” Stewart said. “Obviously, Juan was in a league of his own most of the day. Mark was really, really good on long runs. We just seemed at the halfway point, we never — even before that, we got to where we were a little bit too tight in the center of the corner, never could quite adjust out of it, get it freed up there. Seemed like we either made the exit free back to the gas or else we made the entry and the exit free trying to help it turn the center. But we never could get the center right without messing the entry and exit up.”

So just like race runner-up Martin, Stewart had nothing to apologize for after wards.

“We ran third at the Brickyard 400,” said Stewart, who saw his SHR teammate Ryan Newman finish 14th. “There's no shame in that. Forty-three cars and we ran third today. To come here with a new package, a new crew chief, to run third our first time here together, I think that's a lot to be proud of.

“Of course, yeah, perfect world, we all want to get those extra 10 bonus points (for winning the race). At the same time, I mean, you still got to be consistent each week. You don't have to win a race in the Chase (for the Sprint Cup) to win the championship. You could sit there and run third or fourth every week and have a realistic shot easily to win the championship. To go out there and be consistent, we ran fourth at Chicago, we come here and run third, we're doing the things that we need to do. … To finish third, I'm pretty satisfied with that.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of ?Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,? and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to

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