Tony Stewart Flat-Track Attack

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In: NASCAR Cup Series News

To attack is to take action with purpose and vigor, and it perfectly describes Tony Stewart’s plan for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race Sunday at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway where he will pilot the No. 14 GoDaddy Chevrolet SS for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) in the GoBowling.com 400.

With six races remaining before the start of the 12-driver Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, Stewart and Co. find themselves in control of the wild-card race thanks to their June 2 victory at Dover (Del.) International Speedway and their 11th-place point standing. But giving them even more control of their championship aspirations would be to ascend into the top-10 points, for those drivers among the top-10 are locked into the 10-race Chase following the Sept. 7 cutoff race at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway. Positions 11 and 12 in the Chase are wild cards, awarded to the two drivers between 11th and 20th in points with the most wins. Stewart, Martin Truex Jr., and Ryan Newman are the only drivers between 11th and 20th in points with a victory. Since Stewart and Truex Jr., sit 11th and 12th, respectively, in the standings, they hold the first and second wild-card spots.

Stewart comes into Pocono only one point behind 10th-place Jeff Gordon and a mere seven points behind eighth-place Greg Biffle. A win at Pocono would not only boost Stewart’s point standing, it would solidify his wild-card standing, as he would become the only driver between eighth and 20th in points with two victories.

Pocono is a relatively flat track, but Stewart’s statistics at the quirky, 2.5-mile triangle are anything but flat. In 29 career Sprint Cup starts at Pocono, Stewart has two poles, two wins, eight top-threes, 12 top-fives, 21 top-10s and a total of 156 laps led. He has finished among the top-10 in 13 of his last 17 races at Pocono, and in his last three trips to Pocono, he’s finished among the top-five.

Stewart last visited Pocono on June 9. He started 19th after rain washed out qualifying and the 43-car field was set by owner points. One-hundred-and-sixty laps later, Stewart crossed the stripe in fourth. A little more than a month later at another flat track – New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon – Stewart started 16th and drove his way to the front, leading 84 laps. He entered the final lap in second place, but his fuel cell ran dry before he could take the checkered flag. The resulting 26th-place finish was not indicative of the team’s performance. And last Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway – a vast 2.5-mile oval with scant amounts of banking – Stewart qualified fifth and finished fourth.

With the Sprint Cup Series’ return to Pocono, it’s another opportunity for Stewart and the No. 14 team to take advantage of their flat-track prowess. Their fourth-place runs at Pocono in June and Indy last Sunday indicate another strong performance is in store for the team’s return to Pocono. 

Stewart has regularly transferred success between Indy and Pocono, scoring back-to-back top-10 finishes at the two tracks on seven different occasions (1999, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2012). When Stewart won at Indianapolis in 2005 and 2007, he finished among the top-10 in three of the four Pocono races those two years. (His lone finish outside the top-10 was 29th in June 2005, when three flat tires doomed Stewart’s chances.)

Buoyed by a strong run at Indy that was bolstered by SHR teammate Newman’s even stronger run – a victory in the 20th annual Brickyard 400 – Stewart intends for his flat-track attack to keep on rolling at Pocono, where his purpose is making the Chase and vigorously pursuing a fourth Sprint Cup championship.

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