Sunoco Pit Move: Michigan

Tony Stewart drove the wheels off his No. 20 Chevrolet in Sunday's Citizens Bank 400 at Michigan International Speedway, but it's the work his crew did in the early morning hours on race day that made the difference in the team's third-place finish.

After a horrible qualifying effort on Friday which saw Stewart sitting in the 41st position, things got worse on Saturday during Happy Hour when David Gilliland hit the brakes in front of Stewart and the two-time Cup champion rear-ended the youngster doing serious damage to the front of his racecar.

Stewart was unhappy, saying among other things that Gilliland had a lot to learn, but his crew didn't waver and get frustrated. Instead they went right to work repairing the damage as much as they could.

"We were all here until 4:30 p.m. [Saturday] working on our front fender," Stewart said. Those guys never complained about it even being a little behind because of the place the No. 38 car put us in yesterday."

The crew did as much as they could on Saturday before the garage closed and were right back at it on Sunday morning reshaping the right front nose, fender and passenger side door up until pre-race inspection.

When Stewart took the green flag, he made sure to fall back to the 43rd position when he crossed the start / finish line but he didn't stay there for long.

By Lap 83, Stewart worked his way into the top 10 and just four laps later he passed Casey Mears for fourth. Once Stewart found his way into the top-five, he never left.

"I am really proud of our Home Depot guys," Stewart said. "It will be interesting to see when we get back to the shop if this thing is 100 percent or not, but getting it back up to third place, I thought it was a pretty good day for this Home Depot team."

That's not to say it was smooth-sailing in the 200-lap event. After all the repairs and no practice to see exactly what happened to the car, Stewart found himself battling a tight racecar throughout much of the race.

"It was just really, really tight which tells me it wasn't 100 percent to begin with," Stewart said. "We just kept working around it all day.

"The second to last run was the run that really hurt us. We got a set of tires that was really, really free and not knowing if it was the tires or the adjustment, we put it back to where we were and ended up being too tight that last segment. You just kind of got to do an educated guess there."

Believe it or not, weather was a major factor in Stewart's top-five run and when he looked to the skies, Stewart saw exactly what he was looking for.

"It was a warm day and that's what I was hoping for," he said. "It seems like when this track gets hot and slick, that's when we go our best. I was hoping for a clear day like this. We got perfect weather for what we needed to do today and ended up with a top three."

A perfect ending for a not-so perfect weekend. After all the negatives on Friday and Saturday, it was truly a team effort that pushed Stewart to the front on Sunday.

"I'm really proud of the guys for making the changes that they did," Stewart said. "We worked hard all day, had great pit stops and everybody had a piece of the equation to get us to the top three today."