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Sprint Cup
CUP: Stewart Facing Season Of Challenge
A season after returning to the Sprint Cup throne room, Tony Stewart opens door on new challenges…
Tony Stewart (Left) and Gene Haas (Right) celebrate their 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Championship. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
It’s good to be the king.
Tony Stewart knows that feeling. Fresh from a remarkable Chase that saw him win his third Sprint Cup championship, he sits atop the NASCAR world as 2012 begins to unfold. He won five races and a boatload of money and enters the new year with his stature as one of stock car racing’s finest recertified.
All that does not mean, however, that Stewart rolls into the new season with every duck in a row.
There is work to do. That helps to explain why, a few days after celebrating the championship in Las Vegas, Stewart was back in the Stewart Haas Racing Shop in Kannapolis, NC taking care of business.
It’s going to be a wildly interesting and challenging year for Stewart, both as a driver and team owner.
First, there will be the pressure to repeat as champion, something Stewart could not do after winning titles in 2002 and 2005. He finished seventh in points in 2003 and 11th in 2006. (In fact, Jimmie Johnson is the only champion to repeat in back-to-back years since Jeff Gordon won titles in 1997 and 1998).
Second, Stewart would like more consistency in 2012. His No. 14 team wobbled and staggered into the Chase with no victories and a points performance that kept Stewart on the edge of missing the playoffs.
True, he won five of 10 races in the Chase, but he would be a lot more comfortable this season not having to face the worries created by a mediocre regular season.
Stewart the team owner faces bigger challenges.
Teammate Ryan Newman won only one race in 2011. Although he made the Chase, Newman was mostly forgotten during it, finishing 10th in points. The SHR team needs some work there, too.
Additionally, Stewart and his operation will be under the gun to provide good cars for Danica Patrick, who plans to run in 10 Sprint Cup races for SHR while racing full-time in the Nationwide Series for the first time.
The good news for Stewart is that he has some impressive help in these matters.
Steve Addington, late of Penske Racing, is on board as the new No. 14 crew chief, and he, Stewart and other key players at SHR should click quickly because many of them share a past at Joe Gibbs Racing.
Another JGR “graduate,” Greg Zipadelli, has reunited with Stewart as SHR’s competition director, a position in which his responsibilities – at least at the start of the season – will include serving as Patrick’s Sprint Cup crew chief.
It’s an odd sort of situation – a championship team with new faces in important places. And a new challenge for the champ.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 29 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
Tony Stewart knows that feeling. Fresh from a remarkable Chase that saw him win his third Sprint Cup championship, he sits atop the NASCAR world as 2012 begins to unfold. He won five races and a boatload of money and enters the new year with his stature as one of stock car racing’s finest recertified.
All that does not mean, however, that Stewart rolls into the new season with every duck in a row.
There is work to do. That helps to explain why, a few days after celebrating the championship in Las Vegas, Stewart was back in the Stewart Haas Racing Shop in Kannapolis, NC taking care of business.
It’s going to be a wildly interesting and challenging year for Stewart, both as a driver and team owner.
First, there will be the pressure to repeat as champion, something Stewart could not do after winning titles in 2002 and 2005. He finished seventh in points in 2003 and 11th in 2006. (In fact, Jimmie Johnson is the only champion to repeat in back-to-back years since Jeff Gordon won titles in 1997 and 1998).
Second, Stewart would like more consistency in 2012. His No. 14 team wobbled and staggered into the Chase with no victories and a points performance that kept Stewart on the edge of missing the playoffs.
True, he won five of 10 races in the Chase, but he would be a lot more comfortable this season not having to face the worries created by a mediocre regular season.
Stewart the team owner faces bigger challenges.
Teammate Ryan Newman won only one race in 2011. Although he made the Chase, Newman was mostly forgotten during it, finishing 10th in points. The SHR team needs some work there, too.
Additionally, Stewart and his operation will be under the gun to provide good cars for Danica Patrick, who plans to run in 10 Sprint Cup races for SHR while racing full-time in the Nationwide Series for the first time.
The good news for Stewart is that he has some impressive help in these matters.
Steve Addington, late of Penske Racing, is on board as the new No. 14 crew chief, and he, Stewart and other key players at SHR should click quickly because many of them share a past at Joe Gibbs Racing.
Another JGR “graduate,” Greg Zipadelli, has reunited with Stewart as SHR’s competition director, a position in which his responsibilities – at least at the start of the season – will include serving as Patrick’s Sprint Cup crew chief.
It’s an odd sort of situation – a championship team with new faces in important places. And a new challenge for the champ.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 29 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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