TONY STEWART When the Going Gets Tough…

The expression “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” can easily apply to Tony Stewart and the No. 14 Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 team of Stewart-Haas Racing.

Stewart’s toughness has been on display for the last six months as the three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion has come back from a severely broken right leg suffered in a sprint car crash last August. Stewart has undergone three surgeries, endless physical rehabilitation and the pain associated with each.

It was a triumph to see him back behind the wheel of his signature No. 14 Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 Chevrolet SS in the season-opening Daytona 500 on Feb. 23, but the result – a 35th-place finish due to a fuel pickup problem – was not the outcome Stewart expected. A 16th-place finish the following week at Phoenix International Raceway was not indicative of how Stewart or his racecar performed, but nonetheless it was the result when the checkered flag waved. Then this past Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Stewart dealt with an ill-handling racecar that left him an uncharacteristic 33rd.

Now, Stewart and Co. head to Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, a .533-mile, high-banked, concrete bullring where racing has been compared to flying fighter jets in a gymnasium. That Stewart’s track record at Bristol has been feast-or-famine makes the upcoming Food City 500 even more daunting.

But history shows that Stewart rises to a challenge. His USAC “Triple Crown” victory in 1995, where Stewart won the Sprint, Midget and Silver Crown titles in a single season, came because in the last race of the season, Stewart overtook Silver Crown favorites Jack Hewitt and Dave Darland to win the championship by two points. More recently, Stewart won the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship in epic fashion by winning five of the season’s last 10 races, taking the title in a tiebreaker over Carl Edwards. And in between those two championships, Stewart proved pundits wrong by becoming a successful driver/owner in the Sprint Cup Series when he won on June 7, 2009 at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway seven months after leaving the comfy confines of Joe Gibbs Racing, where Stewart had spent his first 10 years as a Sprint Cup driver. It was the first point-paying Sprint Cup win by a driver/owner since Sept. 27, 1998 when Ricky Rudd won at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.

Stewart’s track record exudes toughness and tenacity, and at Bristol, where toughness and tenacity are prerequisites for success, Stewart carries them like chips on his shoulder. He knows the going is tough, which is why he’s always going.

TSC PR