Stewart Snares Ninth-Place Finish at Martinsville

Stewart hung on for a ninth-place finish in Sunday’s TUMS Fast Relief 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, a late-race caution diminished his chance for a top-five result.
The No. 14 Old Spice/Office Depot Chevrolet Impala SS for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) earned his 22nd top-10 finish of the season and his 13th top-10 in 22 career Sprint Cup starts at Martinsville.
Crew chief Darian Grubb stated “It was definitely a survival day for us, “We were a lot better taking off on a run at the start of the race. We made the car better all day. About the middle of the race, we had the car really good, but had a bad pit stop that dropped us back in traffic. We had to make up for that and try a little strategy, but it ended up putting us back in the field. We were able to run up into the top-five from there, but late cautions didn’t play out for us. We struggled to hang on to a top-10 in the end.”
A sequence of events in the final 50 laps of the 501-lap race provided a view of the up-and-down day Stewart, Grubb and the entire No. 14 team endured.
After making what would turn out to be his final pit stop on lap 444, Stewart restarted the race in 11th-place on lap 448. From there, the two-time Sprint Cup champion picked off six drivers in front of him and was in fifth position by lap 466.
He fell back to sixth on lap 478 when his teammate, Ryan Newman, slipped past him, but with slightly more than 20 laps remaining, it appeared a top-five could still be in the cards for Stewart.
When the caution came out on lap 485, Stewart and Grubb knew immediately they had a tough decision to make – stay out and maintain the track position or pit for fresh tires. The duo decided to stay out, but unfortunately for them, every car behind them entered pit road, meaning every car behind the No. 14 would have the advantage of more grip and a faster racecar.
Stewart put up a valiant fight against the faster cars chasing him, and he was aided by a late caution from laps 496-499 that ended the race in a green-white-checkered finish.
“Everything didn’t fall precisely the way we needed it to,” Grubb said. “It wasn’t what we wanted. I think we had a good top-five car. We just needed to get the car up in track position and we just didn’t get it when it was all over with.”
Newman, driver of the No. 39 U.S. Army/Haas Chevrolet Impala SS, finished seventh to score his 15th top-10 finish of 2009 and his 8th in 16 career Sprint Cup starts at Martinsville.
The last time both Stewart/Haas cars finished in the top-10 came back in September at Dover (Del.) International Speedway when Stewart finished 9th and Newman placed 10th.
Denny Hamlin beat three-time and reigning Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson under caution to win the TUMS Fast Relief 500 and score his 7th career Sprint Cup victory, his 3rd of the season and his 2nd at Martinsville.
Non-American Florida native Juan Pablo Montoya finished 3rd, while Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon rounded out the top-five.
Both Stewart/Haas Racing drivers are represented in this year’s Chase for the Championship. Stewart protected his fourth in the standings, but is now 192 points behind Chase leader Jimmy Johnson. Newman gained one spot to seventh, 312 points out of first.
With only four races remaining before a champion is crowned following the season finale Nov. 22 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the top-12 drivers competing for the title rank as follows:
1. Jimmie Johnson (6,098 points) +/- 0

2. Mark Martin (5,980 points, -118) +/-0

3. Jeff Gordon (5,948 points, -150) +/-0

4. Tony Stewart (5,906 points, -192) +/-0

5. Juan Pablo Montoya (5,898 points, -200) +1

6. Kurt Busch (5,858 points, -240) -1

7. Ryan Newman (5,786 points, -312) +1

8. Greg Biffle (5,748 points, -350) -1

9. Denny Hamlin (5,746 points, -352) +2

10. Carl Edwards (5,685 points, -413) +/-0

11. Kasey Kahne (5,659 points, -439) -2

12. Brian Vickers (5,568 points, -530) +/-0

The next Scheduled event on the Sprint Cup is the Nov. 1 AMP Energy 500 at Talladega (Ala.) Super speedway.

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Stewart giving credit where credit is Due…

There’s no mistake about it. Tony Stewart said he was going to be partying hard following his Saturday night win in the Sprint All-Star Race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
Tony Stewart’s first victory in his own car gave him $1 million. Stewart passed Matt Kenseth with just two laps remaining and won the Sprint All-Star Race.
Stewart stated: “I don’t know if I’ll even be conscious [Sunday],” he said shortly after winning the race and the $1 million that came with it for the first time in his career. “We might set an over/under [bet] and see what time I actually wake up.”
Although this was the his first time winning the All-Star event, it’s not like Stewart has been a stranger to Victory Lane. He entered this season, his 11th in Cup racing, was 33 career victories.
All of those came in points races. And more significantly, all of those came while Stewart was driving a car owned by Joe Gibbs Racing. This was his first win as owner-driver.
Everyone has been surprised with how consistently competitive Stewart has been in his Office Depot No. 14 Chevrolet during the early portion of this season for Stewart-Haas Racing, including Stewart. He said so many times prior to Saturday’s win, when he passed Matt Kenseth’s No. 17 Ford with a lap and a half to go and sailed to a victory that perhaps means more than all the rest.
At the very least, it means more than most of the rest because he did it not only for himself but also for all the loyal employees who now call him boss and for the man who gave him half ownership and nearly complete control over it last year.
That would be Gene Haas, who was serving a prison sentence for a tax evasion conviction. Haas earned an early release just last week and on Saturday attended his first race since then, witnessing first-hand the magical transformation of his race organization that has taken place seemingly overnight under Stewart’s guidance.“There are guys on this team that haven’t been to Victory Lane before,” Stewart said. “That was something I was really looking forward to, getting there and congratulating Gene on his first win, and these guys that have been with the team and have not been in Victory Lane. To see those guys get their first win and be part of it with them was what I was really looking for.
“That means more than a million dollars does to me.“
For good reason, Haas has remained in the background as Stewart has transformed his operation. Stewart admitted that he was nervous when he discovered his mostly silent partner was going to attend Saturday’s All-Star race.
“I wanted him to be proud when he got here — proud of what we’ve done and proud of what he’s been such a huge part of putting together,” Stewart said. “Everybody has given us all the credit for this. But you really have got to give him the credit for taking the gamble and taking the risk to have us come and be a part of this organization, for trusting us to make some pretty big decisions and personnel changes.
“That’s not something that a lot of people in that position are willing to do, to give up control, to let a totally different group of guys come in and all of a sudden start changing things around. But Gene was willing to do that.”
Among the most obvious personnel changes were bringing Stewart and Ryan Newman on board as the two new drivers for the organization. There were many others, hiring of Darian Grubb away from Hendrick Motorsports to be Stewart’s crew chief.
For a while late Saturday night, it looked as if it would be Newman and not Stewart who was going to wheel the first Stewart-Haas car into Victory Lane. But Newman’s No. 39 Chevy got caught up in a three-wide sandwich that also included the No. 18 Toyota of Kyle Busch and the No. 24 Chevy of Jeff Gordon as they battled for the lead with eight laps to go. Newman faded at the end because of the damages his car suffered.
Meanwhile, Grubb kept making the right adjustments at the best of times to Stewart’s car and the No. 14 kept coming.
“Honestly, there wasn’t a corner of the car we didn’t touch,” Grubb said. “We took Tony’s feedback and made adjustments all around — a little bit of tire strategy, track bar, wedge, air pressure … about everything we could do.”
Stewart and Newman were very competitive through the season’s first 11 points races, but were hungering to get to Victory Lane. Doing it in front of Co-Owner Haas made it mean a little more for Stewart.
“He’s been following us every week and knows what the teams have been doing. He knows what happens every day at the race track,” Stewart said. “We just wanted to have a good night for him.”
It turned out to be the best night for the Stewart-Haas Racing team.

Watkins Glen

With race cars zooming down the long, fast frontstretch at the Glen International crest a rise at the start-finish line, and storm downhill toward Turn 1. While the laps add up, the track surface gets more and more slick. With so much of the car’s weight tipped toward the front, the rear tires lock up in a condition drivers call “axle hop.” The result, out-of-control slide past the first turn and into the paved runoff area, and a lost chance at victory if it occurs to the leader late in the race.
It happens to the best of them. In 2007, Jeff Gordon overran Turn 1 at Watkins Glen with two laps go, handing the final lap and win to Tony Stewart. Six years earlier, Dale Jarrett saw a two-second lead disappeared when his car missed the first turn and got stuck in the gravel trap that lurked outside the corner until it was removed in late 2005. On the entire 2.45-mile road course, there’s not a turn more difficult than that big, downhill right-hander that opens every lap.
“It’s tough to hit your marks lap after lap,” Kurt Busch said, “because you’re going downhill, and the car is right on that ragged edge of spinning out each time.”
And now, add the element of double-file restarts. The recent NASCAR rule change placing lead-lap cars beside each other on restarts has led to frantic, almost chaotic action at the end of some races. The rain-delayed event at Pocono Raceway on Monday, where cars banged four-wide after several drivers chose to stay out and pin the leaders back in the field, particularly stoked tempers and frayed nerves.
It also begs the question of what might happen in Sunday’s Cup event at Watkins Glen, where Turn 1 is tough enough for cars running by themselves — much less for multiple drivers cramming the front and leaning on one another for position.
“I think it’s going to be really intense here,” Gordon said.
Yet opinion among drivers is split on exactly how the double-file restarts may be on an already treacherous part of the race track. The removal of the gravel trap, which didn’t just cost cars position but often took them out of the race altogether, clearly increases the margin for error.
With the paved runoff area, Turn 1 is now easily wide enough to accommodate more than one vehicle. Unlike the other Cup road course, Infineon Raceway — where cars are almost forced into a single file — Watkins Glen is wide enough in many places to accommodate side-by-side racing.
“This track is very conducive to having double-file restarts and not getting people in trouble trying to get filed down to one lane,” Stewart said, a four-time winner at Watkins Glen. “So I think it should make it exciting for this weekend. I think this will be a perfect place for it.”
But even with all that room, drivers fighting for the same position can still tangle — as Gordon and Stewart learned in 2000, and Juan Montoya and Kevin Harvick discovered two years ago. Entering Turn 1, drivers don’t need any help. The pavement in that area is rippled from years of cars charging hard into the corner, Gordon said, and drivers rolling over it feel like they’re traversing bumps in the road. Watkins Glen is also a place where competitors have to be aggressive, driving deep into braking zones and trying to get every little bit they can. In Turn 1, some drivers don’t make it.
“Some guys will misjudge the braking and overshoot, and other guys will be more aggressive and take it three-wide and four-wide,” said Gordon, a four time winner. “There’s a lot of crazy stuff that happens down in Turn 1, and I guarantee that if you’re leading the race here this weekend, a caution is the last thing you want to see. I don’t know which lane is going to be the preferred lane either, inside or out, because even though it’s a right-hand turn and you think you would want the inside, if a guy can hold on your outside, then he can carry that momentum off the corner. There are a lot of factors that Turn 1 is going to play at this race this weekend.”
Whether double-file restarts will be one of those factors is yet to be seen, but the odds are good given the impact the rule change has had on recent events. The hairy nature of Monday’s race at Pocono has drivers at Watkins Glen preparing for the worst, but hoping for the best.
“As of late, the last few weeks … as we’re getting more comfortable, it seems as if there are more risks taken on double-file restarts toward the ends of these races,” Busch said. “Some guys, they decided they were going to stay out, they have old tires, they’re banking on the competition running into one another so it creates more yellows. It’s become disturbing, just watching these restarts. Everybody’s running into each other. A car that was good all day long can have trouble getting back through the pack and getting a top-five finish.”
Carl Edwards was equally as emphatic. “Last week was awful,” he said. “… I’m hoping this week, this race goes as it has in the past, [and] there won’t be too many restarts. Those double-file restarts seem to breed more restarts. It could end up being a one- or two-lap sprint race at the end, so that could have a huge impact. I hope it doesn’t, but it could, and we’re prepared for that. I’m prepared for that.”