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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: SHR Has Best Race Yet
Stewart-Haas Racing continues to build on what so far has been an excellent season.
Tom Jensen  |  Posted March 29, 2009   Martinsville, VA
SHR driver Tony Stewart finished third In Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

If you want to look at how far and how fast the new Stewart-Haas Racing outfit has come, you don’t have to look very far at all.

In Sunday’s Goody’s Fast Pain Relief 500 at Martinsville Speedway, SHR drivers Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman finished third and sixth, respectively, the first time both drivers have finished in the top 10 in the same race this season. In its brief history since Stewart became co-owner and re-named the team, SHR now has scored one top-five and six top-10 finishes.

If the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season ended today after just six races, SHR already would have earned more top 10s in a single season than it did in any of its six full-time seasons as Haas-CNC Racing, the team Stewart became co-owner of over the off-season.

For Stewart, in the difficult position of being team co-owner and driver, as well as the agent of a change for a once-woebegone outfit that is suddenly looking ready to win its first race, Martinsville simply was the latest in a series of steps forward the team has made.

Given that the team has two new drivers, two new crew chiefs, a new competition director and lot of new employees at a time when NASCAR has imposed a testing ban, the progress it’s made in six races has been nothing short of remarkable.

“Ryan's learning a new package, I'm learning a new package, and it's learning what each other wants,” Stewart said of his team’s ongoing advancement. “Every week when we make changes, we know how much it affects us percentage wise. … Each week as it goes on, it makes it a little easier. I think we changed like six or seven things before the race today. It's just having that confidence and knowing that from his input and his feel, my input and my feel … knowing how much we need to make those adjustments to be good.”

And Stewart said he’s confident that a first victory isn’t too far away. “You know, it's coming,” he said. “It just takes time. It's like we say every Monday in our competition meeting. We just got to build a database first. Once we get that established, then I think the second time we come around, we're going to be a little better yet.”

Newman was pleased that he was able to drive from his starting spot of 27th to score his second consecutive top 10. “The guys did a good job making adjustments and we did make a lot of changes today,” said Newman. “The pit stops were good — the bottom line is we stayed headstrong and got our positioning back and got up to sixth.”

“The first half of the race the car was really, really tight,” added Newman. “There wasn't much I could do with it. There at the end it came to us. We just made the best of it today.”

NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES GOODY'S FAST PAIN RELIEF 500 RESULTS

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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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