Restarts an issue all race for AMS winner Stewart (cont'd)

"This is, by far, the best car that I've ever had here," Stewart said. "[Sunday] was so much fun on the race car, because we could run the bottom, we could run the top, and I told [crew chief Darian Grubb on Saturday], there were times in practice where I have run higher than I have ever run here, and I told him, normally I don't have the confidence to put myself in that position to not have room to the right of me to give myself that buffer.

"[Sunday] is probably the only time that I can ever remember being at Atlanta and being able to take off and have the beginning of the run speed that we had."

“

The pit crew is who we have got to give all the credit to. They had an awesome pit stop the last time we came in that got us that track position that I lost on the previous restart. So you know, without that, I don't think we would have a shot to be here.

”

-- TONY STEWART

But in order to take advantage of that, Stewart had to get up front.

"We had to be the fastest car all night at the beginning of the run," Stewart said. "If we got track position and we got anywhere close to clean air, we were able to just take off.

"Once we got two or three laps in, I didn't have to run as hard as the guys behind me to try to pass me -- I was able to take care of the tires and after five more laps we were are able to drive away from those guys and open up a huge gap."

Fine after two or three laps wasn't as much an issue as getting up to speed again, something that created some cavalry charges into Turn 1 on a number of restarts, as drivers behind Stewart tried to avoid running him over.

"I was the guy normally in the middle of the three-wide because I couldn't get going and it's a wide enough track that guys could get around and go where I wasn't," Stewart said. "It wasn't a product of the track. It's that I was really struggling on it.

"The good thing is I probably could have got run over a lot of times and given a lot more opportunity to get run over but these guys were able to find ways around it. It wasn't good for me that they found ways around but it was good that they didn't run me over in the process."

For someone as competitive as Stewart, the frustration was palpable.

"It's not fun to lose spots like that, especially when you work so hard to get them," Stewart said. "And to lose them at the start/finish line, or before we get to Turn 1, it's kind of disheartening.

"But like we mentioned earlier, when you have a car that that's fast and is really good off the bat on the restart and you can get those spots back, it's easier to not get as discouraged when it's happening and know that we have a good shot at getting those spots back within a lap or two."

And with the win, not only did Stewart extend his Cup winning streak to 12 seasons, but he picked up 10 bonus points for the Chase and some valuable momentum. But Stewart refuses to believe this is as good as things can get.

"I don't know if we have peaked," Stewart said. "I mean, how do you know when you've peaked? I guess if you're winning every week, you feel like you're peaking to a certain degree.

"The thing I guess I've been really excited about, especially the last two months, we have been kind of silent every weekend and we are gaining on it. And it's not been in one-week increments where we've had a big change and all of the sudden everybody goes, wow, they are starting to figure it out."

So has Stewart's team reached its potential in 2010, or is Sunday night's success a sign of better things to come?

"I hope we are not as high as we are going to get on the thing," Stewart said. "I think we got room to be better and I think we got guys right now that nights like [Sunday] are what keep these guys excited about the long hours they are putting in and the hard work they are putting in. When you can help deliver some results like this, it makes those guys work that much harder to keep doing that every week."