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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Pressure Is Off Says Stewart
Tony Stewart is fourth in the NASCAR Sprint Cup points standings...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted October 21, 2009   Charlotte, NC
After starting the Chase seeded in first spot, Tony Stewart is in fourth after five races. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

It’s been an interesting first season for Tony Stewart as the co-owner/driver of Stewart-Haas Racing.

On the one hand, SHR has far exceeded expectations, with Stewart winning four points races and the Sprint All-Star race, and both Stewart and Ryan Newman qualifying for the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

And for a long while, Stewart was regarded as the championship favorite, having won the regular season Sprint Cup points race, and at one juncture scoring 13 top-five finishes in 17 races, an unheard of effort for what essentially is a first-year team.

But with three-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson suddenly red hot, Stewart finds himself fourth in points, 155 markers in arrears of Johnson with the 10-race Chase at the midway point.

Now, there’s two ways to look at the current state of affairs. One would be to become frustrated, the other is to simply relax and do the best you can and let the chips fall where they may. Not surprisingly, Stewart is taking the latter approach.

“All we can do is just do our job,” said Stewart, who won Sprint Cup championships in 2002 and ’05. “Even if we win the race for the last five weeks in a row, there is still no guarantee that we could close the gap.”

Still, at this point, Stewart is conceding nothing to Johnson, especially not with the next two races at Martinsville Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway, a pair of tracks where anything can — and frequently does — happen.

“No, anything can happen to any of the teams. At this point, who knows? Until somebody comes up and says ‘OK, mathematically you are out of it, until then, we have got a shot. That is all I can say about it. That is all we know. There is no blueprint that says, this is how you win or don’t win a championship. So as long as mathematically you still have a chance, you’re still in it. Until they tell you that you can’t physically or mathematically catch up, then you are still in it. You still have a shot.”

Stewart knows whereof he speaks. When he raced in the USAC Silver Crown Series in 1995, he trailed Jack Hewitt and Dave Darland by a substantial margin late in the season, yet came back to win the championship in the last race of the year.

“We were kind of the third wheel,” said Stewart. “We were only included in the group media sessions because we were mathematically in the hunt. Both of those drivers ended up having problems in the race, and we won the point championship by two points. You realize when you use that experience, knowing that as long as you’re mathematically in the hunt, you still have a shot.”

And that brings us to Martinsville, a track Johnson has dominated in recent years, but one where Stewart has two victories and eight top-five finishes, as well as nearly 1,200 laps led.

Despite the criticism NASCAR’s new-generation Sprint Cup car has taken, Stewart said it suits the Martinsville track especially well.

“With these cars you don’t have the kinds of accidents where guys get turned around because the bumpers on all these cars match up so well,” he said. “If you get in a situation where a guy checks up in front of you and you run into him by accident and the guy behind you hits you, you’re not going to spin each other out. That’s made short track racing fun again. You’re not worried about having to explain to somebody that whatever contact you had was an accident.”

So can Stewart use Martinsville as a springboard to get back in title contention? Time will tell.

“All we can do is worry about ourselves right now,” Stewart said. “It really takes the pressure off of us. All we can do is go for broke now.”

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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