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"We've been pretty fortunate," Gibbs said as he watched Labonte's team pack away their broken race car. "This is a big setback for us, getting ready for the last part of the season here and making a big run at it, and have this happen to us."
It's the first time this season both cars have blown engines in the same race. It's the third engine to go bad for Stewart, but the first time Labonte has dropped out of a race with engine failure.
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| Bobby Labonte exits his car after crashing on lap 180. |
Gibbs said it was too early to tell if the failures were related, but they'd figure it out.
He sounded concerned, however, that it might be more than a simple problem.
"I really don't know," Gibbs said. "When you have two like that, it leans more towards, 'We've got a problem.'"
The sight has been all too familiar for Stewart and his team this season: sullen crewmen loading up the orange No. 20 on the hauler, with the roar of engines blaring in the background.
Sunday, Stewart failed to finish a Winston Cup race for the fifth time in 2003, this time the victim of a blown engine in the Pennsylvania 500.
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| Tony Stewart's crew loads the No. 20 Monte Carlo for the trip back to Huntersville, N.C. |
The championship defense clearly hasn't gone well this season, and after the third blown engine of the season, it is likely Stewart won't repeat as Winston Cup champ.
After finishing 37th, Stewart slipped five places to 14th in the Winston Cup points standings, 694 behind leader Matt Kenseth.
Stewart, whose car began pouring smoke from the engine compartment on lap 155, crawled out of his car and quickly headed to his hauler. Later, after changing clothes, Stewart ducked out of the garage area without addressing reporters.
"We figured it broke a rod or spun a bearing or something," said his crew chief, Greg Zipadelli. "It doesn't give much a warning. Temperatures were good all day. It's a shame. The motor department's been working hard. This team's been strong. We just don't have a lot to show for it."
Stewart is close to matching his DNF total from last year, when he failed to finish six times. He led 14 laps after rallying from the 33rd starting position.
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"It's a shame," Zipadelli said. "We didn't qualify well, but we sure showed that we were here."
Labonte wasn't quite as strong as Stewart, but he still ran inside the top 10.
"We right there in the middle of a hornets' nest for a while," Labonte said. "The car was all over the place. We lost a cylinder and tried to ride it out to the end. It let go going down the back straightaway, similar to what Tony's looked like -- except I got in my own oil."
Like Gibbs, Labonte said he didn't know if the engine failures were related.
"It's always a question when one guy blows up who's your teammate," Labonte said. "Everybody says, 'Were you afraid you were going to blow up?' You never know. A lot of cases, it doesn't happen. In some cases, it does, and today it did."
Stewart blew engines at Texas and California earlier this year. At California, he led 100 laps before the engine let go.
"We've picked up and gone on quite a few times," Zipadelli said. "Well, we'll head to Indy. That's all we can do. We've got good cars. We've got a great motor for there. This might fire us up a little bit for there."
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