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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Stewart Carrying Gains Into Chase
Tony Stewart scored a commanding win Sunday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted September 06, 2010   Hampton, GA
Tony Stewart is all smiles after winning Sunday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Silent but deadly. That’s the bearing Tony Stewart has been riding as he approaches the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

LINK> UNOFFICIAL RESULTS: EMORY HEALTHCARE 500 - ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY
PDF > UNOFFICIAL DRIVER POINTS: EMORY HEALTHCARE 500 - ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY

His Stewart-Haas Racing team has been steadily improving – in small steps, not huge ones – over the summer months and finally put Stewart in position to visit victory lane. The veteran driver ended a 31-race winless string by scoring his first victory of the season Sunday night in the Emory Healthcare 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

“Over the last two months we’ve kind of been silent, but we’re gaining on it,” said Stewart, who rebounded from a string of six straight races with finishes of 16th or worse in the spring. That run had left him 18th in points. Now he’s fourth.

“It’s been a lot of little steps in the last 10 to 12 races,” Stewart said. “Nobody’s really noticed it, but we’ve noticed it internally.”

Stewart had a powerful car in leading 176 laps – easily the race high – Sunday night. He led the final 25 laps of the race after his pit crew, which had one of its best races of the season, put him out front on the final round of stops.

In fact, Stewart relied on the pit crew to keep him floating around the front because he was having trouble retaining or gaining positions on restarts.

“I struggled on restarts all night,” he said. “I was spinning the tires (not getting traction). The whole night I kept trying different things because I knew I was struggling to get the grip on the restart.

“Finally, the last two I hit it a lot closer and kept from spinning quite as bad. The pit crew had an awesome pit stop the last time we came in. Without that, I don’t think we would have had a shot to be here tonight.”

Despite those pesky problems, Stewart said his car was the best he’s ever driven at AMS, where his former employer, Joe Gibbs Racing, has quite a record of success.

“This is by far the best car I’ve ever had here,” he said. “Tonight was so much fun in the race car. We could run the bottom. We could run the top.”
VIDEO: Last Lap Cup - Atlanta Tony Stewart wins at AMS. (Image: SPEED)

Now Stewart is ready to tackle the Chase after a final tuneup next weekend at Richmond.

“We had a hard first half of the year where we struggled a lot, but we have a motto where when we get down we don’t give up,” he said. “We get up.”

Crew chief Darian Grubb said the win should boost the team going into the end-of-season run.

“It’s definitely huge to be able to get the win before we go into the Chase,” he said. “It’s good to have the momentum. We’ve learned a lot of things over the last few months to make Tony comfortable in the race car. Tonight we had all the pieces together.”

LINK> UNOFFICIAL RESULTS: EMORY HEALTHCARE 500 - ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY
PDF > UNOFFICIAL DRIVER POINTS: EMORY HEALTHCARE 500 - ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.

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