A strong qualifying effort placed Tony Stewart 10th in the 43-car field for Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway. But when the race was over and Stewart finished 29th, that strong qualifying effort seemed like a distant memory.
Just eight laps into the 400-lap race around the .75-mile oval, Stewart reported that his No. 14 Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 Chevrolet SS was extremely tight into the center of the corner and loose off. By lap 30, the car’s ill-handling nature was so intense that Stewart called for “wholesale changes” to the chassis, saying it “plowed” through the corners.
But whether the changes were nuanced, such as adjusting the tire pressures, or radical, such as round-after-round of wedge into the right- and left-side of the Bass Pro Shops/Mobil1 machine, the car didn’t respond.
By the end of the race Stewart was four laps down. His 29th-place finish was only his fifth outside of the top-25 in 33 career Sprint Cup starts at Richmond.
TSC PR
