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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Stewart Looking To Smoke Texas Field
Sprint Cup Champion Tony Stewart will be looking to join Jeff Burton as the only driver to win multiple Cup races at Texas Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s Samsung 500.
Tom Jensen  |  Posted April 04, 2008   Fort Worth, Tex.
Tony Stewart was quickest during the first test session for the Bud Shootout. (Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images Photo)n

Two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion Tony Stewart will be looking to join Jeff Burton as the only driver to win multiple Cup races at Texas Motor Speedway, site of Sunday’s Samsung 500.

Stewart, who has led more laps at Texas than any other driver over the past six races, will come into race No. 7 of 36 on the season as one of the strong favorites. Stewart has always run well at fast 1.5-mile tracks, as evidenced by his second-place finish in the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway last month.

And with Joe Gibbs Racing already having scored two victories in the first six races of 2008, Stewart is with a team that hasn’t missed a beat since switching from Chevrolet to Toyota during the off-season.

The one variable this weekend will be that this will be the first race with NASCAR’s new-generation race car at TMS, though it has already raced at three high-speed intermediate oval tracks this year – Atlanta, California Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

“It’s the first time that we’ve been there with this car, so it’s kind of a ‘from scratch’-type attitude,” said Stewart. “It’s not an Atlanta. It’s not California. It’s not Vegas, but I’d say Vegas is probably going to be a little bit closer to it than anywhere we’ve been so far. We’ll probably start fairly close to where we ended up at Vegas and go from there.”

Stewart likes TMS for the same reason he enjoys Atlanta. At both tracks, the pavement is well-used and therefore is both extremely grippy and wide in its grooves.

“I’ve found that you can pass anywhere, really,” said Stewart. “If you get a guy that misses the bottom of the corner and he bobbles, you can get around him. But even if someone doesn’t make a mistake and you’ve got a little better car than they do, the groove has moved up enough over the years to where the track’s a little wider, so you have more room to get a run on a guy. But as the tires wear out and grip goes away, drivers will make mistakes and a car’s handling will become more important. And when a guy makes a mistake, you need to be there to capitalize on it. You can really pass anywhere as long as the right opportunity comes up.”

And that has Stewart ready to go for Sunday’s race. “It puts you in a positive frame of mind when you go to a track knowing that you’ve run well there before,” said Stewart. “Absolutely. You can actually pass. You can race. You can get away from guys if your car’s fast.”

Tom Jensen is the Senior NASCAR Editor 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 numerous television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the President of the National Motorsports Press Association. 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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