Stewart makes the best of potential disaster at NHMS

LOUDON, N.H. -- Moral victories may not exist in motor racing, but the points Tony Stewart, Darian Grubb and their Stewart-Haas Racing team scrambled to save Sunday in the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway are definitely huge in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

"When we get to the end," Stewart-Haas competition director Bobby Hutchens said, "we may look back and think that that was the moment that may have made the difference. Is it a bad day? Yeah, but it's not a total loss."

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Tony Stewart lost valuable track position as his crew fixes a rear axle that came apart.

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Stewart, who led the points for the final 13 weeks of the regular season and came into the 10-race Chase seeded second to leader and Sunday race winner Mark Martin, had a potential winning car early in the 300-lap race.

But about 23 laps after halfway, under the race's fifth caution, the left rear-axle cap on Stewart's No. 14 Chevrolet was noticeably wobbling. Stewart, who to that point had never dropped out of the top five, ran more than 20 more laps, but finally made an extended pit stop under the seventh caution, at Lap 195, that forced him to restart 26th.

From there, the scramble was on at a track where running back in traffic wreaks havoc with cars' handling. But after a final green-flag pit sequence that enabled him to lead one more lap and three cautions in the last 25 laps, Stewart finished 14th.

But the team co-owner appeared far from thrilled after he drove off the race track and parked his car behind its hauler in the garage. He slowly got out, removed his heat shields and placed them in the cockpit then, ignoring the soft drink and bottles of water left for him atop the car, turned to his assistants and said, "Let's go."

He purposefully strode from the garage, ignoring the small cadre of print and television media who were waiting behind his hauler to speak to him.

Later, Hutchens and crew chief Grubb agreed there were some positives their team could take from the day. Stewart entered the Chase 20 points behind Martin and now heads to Dover next week sixth in the points, 74 behind Martin. (Continued)