Stewart, Park bounce back at NHIS
By Dave Rodman, Turner Sports Interactive
July 23, 2001
9:35 AM EDT (1335 GMT)
LOUDON, N.H. -- Tony Stewart and Steve Park each stopped streaks of futility that stretched back to last month in the New England 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway on Sunday.
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Since winning at Sears Point, Stewart had endured two weeks of struggle.
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Neither Stewart, who was the race’s defending champion nor Park, who had enjoyed superlative success here in NASCAR’s feeder series, had a car that could match top-three finishers Dale Jarrett, Jeff Gordon and Ricky Rudd; but neither was complaining afterward.
Stewart, whose best finish since he won the Dodge/Save Mart 350 at Sears Point Raceway June 24 was 26th, ended up fourth after doggedly moving up from 25th. Park, who had not had a finish in the top 20 since he finished second to Gordon at Dover June 3, was sixth.
Stewart, particularly, was pleased to score his 10th top-10 this season and move from sixth to fourth in the Winston Cup standings, taking advantage of Rusty Wallace’s engine failure that knocked him from fourth coming into NHIS to sixth, after he finished 43rd.
"Every yellow that came out, we got tight for about 10 laps,” said Stewart, who was hurt badly by the three cautions that fell in the last 48 laps. “Every caution that came out there late just made our car tighter and tighter in the center.”
"Track position killed us all day,” crew chief Greg Zipadelli said. “We just couldn't get up there. We were in the top five most of the afternoon, but lapped cars and our pit selection from qualifying poorly hurt us and it's hard to overcome those few things.”
"It was a long day,” Stewart said. “I got a really tore up race car there at the end."
The final 22 laps displayed some of the most spirited racing of the day. Former NASCAR Modified foes Park and Jimmy Spencer engaged in some hard racing before Spencer squeezed by Park, bumping him from the fifth spot he had bumped past Spencer to gain a few laps before.
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In the four races prior to Loudon, Park's best finish was 26th.
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“We’ve had five really bad weeks that we’ve struggled -- to come close to getting another top-five is a good sign that we’re back,” Park said after maintaining his 13th position in the point standings. “We ran good the first part of the year (but) they took the bump rubbers away and that threw us a curve ball.
“We’ve been able to go back and test and try to get back on track. We qualified fifth and finished sixth -- I consider that being back on track.”
“We've just got to get rolling again,” said Zipadelli, who engineered a series leading six wins by Stewart a year ago. “We've got a lot of good races coming up and hopefully we can turn it around there."
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