For the most part, the 2015 season has served as a paradox to Tony Stewart’s decorated NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career that includes 48 wins and three championships. The tide has seemingly been turning in recent weeks as Stewart has found the speed that’s eluded him for much of the season, turning fast laps in practice and qualifying sessions while also enjoying a streak of improved on-track performance in race situations.
Appropriately enough, the shift in Stewart’s 2015 campaign coincides with a trip to the track where Stewart has, in recent years, also experienced a bit of a renaissance – Bristol Motor Speedway.
Stewart will pilot his No. 14 Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 Chevrolet SS for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) in Saturday’s Irwin Tools Night Race. It will be his 32nd career Sprint Cup start at the high-banked, half-mile oval in eastern Tennessee, and it’s a track that for the majority of Stewart’s 17 years in the Sprint Cup Series has served an equal amount of prosperity and frustration.
One win, a pole, four top-threes, seven top-fives, 10 top-10s and a total of 1,355 laps led exemplify the prosperity portion of Stewart’s Bristol equation. But on the flip side is a total of eight finishes outside the top-25 – most of which occurred when dominant runs were derailed. From 2008 to 2013, Stewart finished in the top-10 on only two occasions, with a second-place finish in the 2010 Food City 500 being the highlight.
The results of his last two Bristol starts, however, harken back to Stewart’s early years competing in Thunder Valley.
In the spring of 2014, Stewart rallied from his 37th-place starting spot to nab a fourth-place finish in the Food City 500 – a result that marked his first top-five effort of the season.
Fast forward to the 2015 edition of the Food City 500 where Stewart once again exhibited the tenaciousness that has made him a multi-time champion. After starting 21st and hovering between 12th and 15th for much of the race before finally cracking the top-10 through a combination of heady driving, pit strategy and good fortune, Stewart was able to outlast the attrition and foiled pit strategy that befell his peers to earn a sixth-place finish.
With a season that is showing signs of getting back on track for Stewart, it’s fitting he returns to venue where that’s already happened.
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