Tony Stewart Keep On Truckin’

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In: NASCAR Cup Series News

Tony Stewart drove his No. 14 Rush Truck Centers/Mobil 1 Chevrolet SS to a solid 14th-place finish in the Auto Club 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race Sunday at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. The effort was Stewart’s best of the season, but it didn’t come easy.

A skirmish with the No. 78 Chevrolet of Martin Truex Jr., on lap 163 punched a hole in the nose of Stewart’s machine. Truex, unhappy with another competitor, drove across three lanes on the backstretch of the wide, 2-mile oval and in doing so, cut across the front end of Stewart’s Rush Truck Centers/Mobil 1 Chevy. This damaged the rear of Truex’s bumper, but the impact to Stewart’s car was far greater. The hole drastically affected the car’s aerodynamics, and it couldn’t be fixed until a prolonged pit stop while under caution on lap 186. That dropped Stewart from 13th to 20th when the race restarted on lap 190.

“He (Truex) had a problem with somebody else and I’m the one who paid the price for it,” said Stewart, a two-time Sprint Cup winner at Fontana (2010 and 2012). “I got a hole knocked in the nose and it takes us out of contention to have a top-10 finish.”

Stewart powered his way forward in the closing laps, surviving two attempts at a green-white-checkered finish to claim 14th.

A savvy call by crew chief Chad Johnston to stay out when the penultimate caution flag waved on lap 200 bought Stewart some track position, advancing the three-time Sprint Cup champion from 17th to second for the first green-white-checkered restart on lap 203. But when the caution flag few for the final time because of debris on lap 204, Stewart’s worn-out tires were no match for the fresh tires of his competitors when the green flag dropped for the final, green-white-checkered shootout.

“We just had to do the opposite of what everybody else did,” Stewart said. “It wasn’t the best case scenario for us, but we had to take a chance.”

The 14th-place finish, while far from a victory, did allow Stewart and Co. to see a light at the end of the tunnel in what has been a difficult start to the season.

“We’re gaining on it a little chunk at a time,” Stewart said. “We didn’t need to get it all today, but this is a big gain for us.”

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