CUP: Phoenix Was Key To Stewart’s Title Run

Sprint Cup

CUP: Phoenix Was Key To Stewart’s Title Run

Tony Stewart finished third at PIR last year…

Tom Jensen | Posted November 08, 2012 Avondale, AZ

Tony Stewart drives at Phoenix International Raceway last fall. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

There will be no repeat NASCAR Sprint Cup championship for Tony Stewart this season, no magical run to another title, as there was last year.

In 2011, Stewart had the most remarkable close to a season since the Chase for the Sprint Cup era began in 2004, winning five of the 10 Chase races, including three of the final four to capture his third series crown.

Expected to make another strong charge this year, Stewart’s Chase has mostly been a disappointment so far. In eight Chase races so far, Stewart’s best finishes were a pair of fifth places, at Kansas and Texas. But with three races where he ended the day 20th or worse, Stewart’s average Chase finish is just 13.125 and he now finds himself eighth in points heading into Sunday’s AdvoCare 500 at Phoenix International Raceway.

Last year’s fall race at PIR was one of the keys to Stewart’s title run.

Although he didn’t win at Phoenix last year, Stewart led the most laps and passed Jeff Burton on the final lap to move from fourth to third and pick up an additional point. Had he not passed Burton and settled for fourth place, Carl Edwards would have finished one point ahead of Stewart and won the 2011 Sprint Cup championship. Instead, they tied and Stewart won on the basis of a tiebreaker for most race victories, five to one.

Stewart remembers the pass against Burton well.

“Every point counted,” Stewart said. “That’s why we raced Carl (Edwards) so hard and Kasey (Kahne) so hard. We led enough laps to lead the most laps. We were going for every single point we could get.

“I overdrove it in two corners before I finally passed him (Burton), but it just looked like he got a little tight and I was able to get rotated in the center and I got underneath him,” Stewart said. “But I don’t think he pushed the issue really hard. I think he raced us with respect and I appreciated that.”

What was most impressive about Stewart’s race last year was it was the first on the newly configured and repaved PIR track surface. Stewart took to the new track better than many of his rivals did, which served him well in the race.

“We go to dirt races and we get two to three laps of practice and you line up and qualify, so I felt like I had the ability to adapt to the new layout as well as anybody,” said Stewart “I was comfortable with it from the start.”

That said, like many of his peers, Stewart isn’t a fan of repaves.

“I still wouldn’t have changed the shape the way they did,” he said. “I guess the computers are smarter than the drivers these days. But I thought it was a good race. You had the flexibility to move up and down and, really, that’s all you can ask for. Our car was a little loose on restarts, but it just seemed like we were actually better on the outside than we were on the inside. Once the groove moved up, once they got rubber up there, the racetrack was wide enough you could run two-wide then.”

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.

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Tom Jensen

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