Tony Stewart will start fourth in Saturday night's UAW-GM Quality 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Credit: Autostock

Stewart guardedly optimistic after qualifying

CONCORD, N.C. -- Though many NASCAR talking heads are already handing the 2005 championship to Tony Stewart, he remains cautiously optimistic. For now.

"I'd rather be ahead (in the standings) than behind," Stewart said Thursday. "We could be the fastest car by a second, but we could get caught up in a wreck or blow an engine and it all changes.

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"You just take it one lap at a time the rest of the season."

Stewart carried that approach into Bud Pole Qualifying for the UAW-GM Quality 500 and placed the No. 20 Chevrolet fourth on the starting grid -- his best start at LMS since earning the pole three years ago.

"We're really happy with the lap. I thought I could run a (29 seconds) flat, and that wasn't far off of that," Stewart said. "The good thing is they were both consistent laps. Car's driving really good."

Stewart commented that the levigated LMS surface was ultra-fast, a dynamic that raised concern in the garage that passing might be made difficult in Saturday night's race.

"Now that we're running so fast it's going to be hard to pass, probably," Stewart said. "Not because you can't run on the track, but because we're running so quick you're going to have to be a lot faster than a guy to get by."

Back in May, the Coca-Cola 600 produced a record 22 caution periods, and Stewart and fellow Chase contender Greg Biffle both crashed two cars during testing.

Second rowPoints leader Tony Stewart qualifies fourth at Lowe's Sign up for TrackPass now BUY YOUR NEXTEL DRIVER PHONE

"We all kind of got around Humpy when we crashed cars and said we've got to do something here," Stewart said. "We all gave Humpy a hard time about changing this place, but he stepped up and tried to make a change to make it better from the spring to the fall.

"It needed some work and he didn't realize that. It's hard until you get a car on there to know. But he was proactive about it. He did his part. He worked on the track, dragged tires around it and made it better for both divisions.

"So it has a lot more grip and it's a lot faster, for sure. We aren't seeing the problems we saw in testing."

Pole winner Elliott Sadler said one major improvement came in Turn 2, where Wheeler had the surface ground down.