While Tony Stewart seems to be having a dream season for a driver/owner. There have been some spots that have not been so bright. And the break last week hopefully gave the two-time champion and his teams a chance to regroup and get refocused on the challenge at hand.
Since Stewart won at Watkins Glen, the Stewart-Haas #14 team have had finishes of 17th and 33rd. Not the type of finishes that Stewart fans have come to expect from this new team and its veteran driver.
But still the #14 team has only three finishes outside of the top 20. And only 6 finishes outside of the top 10. The rest of their finishes have been in the top 10 or better.
As Stewart heads into Atlanta this weekend, he still leads the points. Where he has been since he won at Pocono in June. That is an amazing 12 weeks. Before this year the most weeks Stewart had lead the points consecutive weeks was in 2005 for 8 weeks. That year he lead the points a total of 15 weeks. In 2002 he lead the points for 7 weeks. Both years in which Stewart lead the points, he has won the championship. Once under the old rules and once with the chase rules.
So while all of the teams are preparing to head into Atlanta, Stewart fans are eagerly waiting for Stewart to get back on track and have more top 10 finishes and win more races before the end of the year.
LOL Love that picture TSFan...doesnt look like Tony has missed any meals lately. =)
ReplyDeleteSo was there any info on what the heck happened with him being on the wrong channel? Definitely new team growing pains - he has been lucky (and smart) to have so few instances of it this season.
Enjoy the race this weekend!
Kris this is from his website www.tonystewart.com
ReplyDelete“Well, I’m telling you, this was like an episode of the Twilight Zone,” said Stewart after completing his 22nd career Sprint Cup race at Bristol. “How it started was I switched my frequency on my radio over to Ryan’s (Newman) channel to wish them luck, which is not uncommon, but I couldn’t go back to my channel. Every channel I went to, it was still them. And then I switched to the second radio, which is our backup radio, and I hadn’t even touched it, and it was them. So the first 200 laps, I’m listening to Ryan and his spotter. That’s what I was hearing on the radio. The reason I stayed on that and didn’t unplug the radio was because at least if a caution came out I could hear his spotter calling the caution out.
“Then we had a short in the wiring harness to the ignition boxes and we thought it was the safety kill switch because the light came on and I guess it just shows if there is a short in the system somewhere. It was real sporadic and then all of a sudden it came on. Whatever it was wiggled itself loose enough that they finally just got one of the junctions in the ignition box back together.
“Nobody gave up or was yelling and screaming. I thought everybody handled it well. That’s the first fire drill we’ve had to go through during a race and I thought, considering, that everybody did a good job. I couldn’t do anything until I got back to the pit box and they did an awesome job of tearing through it and trying to figure out what it was.”
Sounds like the little gremlins were at work on Tony's car and radio. Lets hope they moved on. Tony is due for another win
ReplyDeleteI agree
ReplyDelete