Driver of the No. 14 nabs first top-five finish since Fontana
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MORE: Hear Stewart’s post-race reaction
They don’t award grandfather clocks for fourth-place finishes at Martinsville Speedway, and getting passed for the lead with just four laps remaining and the checkered flag within reach usually carries with it some associated measure of heartburn. But for as long as Tony Stewart had gone without a top-five performance, he still felt like celebrating as the sun set on a chaotic Sunday afternoon.
Stewart came tantalizingly close to converting a late-race pit strategy call into his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory of the season, surrendering the lead on older tires to Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the waning stages of the Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500. Though he came up just shy of extending his streak with at least one victory to 16 years — the length of his Sprint Cup career — tying his season-best finish and notching his first top-five since March at Auto Club Speedway was consolation prize enough.
“It feels really good. It’s been way too long since we’ve been in this position, for sure,” Stewart said. “This is as good as a win to me today.”
The result was easily Stewart’s best since his three-week absence from the sport at summer’s end, after the sprint-car accident that claimed the life of Kevin Ward Jr. on Aug. 9 in Canandaigua, New York. Since his return at Atlanta over Labor Day weekend, his results had been largely uneven — he led laps at Talladega last weekend before crashing out, and his best finish pre-Martinsville was a 14th place at Dover.
Sunday, at the series’ shortest track, the cards fell back into place for the three-time champion. Stewart started fourth and recovered from a midrace penalty for having too many men over the pit wall. By the time he sidestepped all the crashes and pitfalls that took out several contenders in the race’s second half, he was back among the front-runners and running fourth when pit road was opened for the final time.
With tires some 60 laps older than the drivers who elected to pit, Stewart and crew chief Chad Johnston elected to remain on the track to inherit the lead. Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon slipped by Stewart shortly after the final restart, and Clint Bowyer snatched third away by just a fender at the checkered flag.
Though the ultimate payoff didn’t happen, Stewart said the strategy call wasn’t one he’d second-guess.
“That was a scenario that if you put me in that position 100 times, that’s the decision we make to stay out,” Stewart said. “I’d rather fight them off at the end like that. Just worrying about so many things, especially on this pit road. You don’t know what can happen — two tires, four tires, guys at the end of the pack coming in when you’re ready to go out. So many things that could go wrong, and I felt like even when we got to fourth, I felt I’d saved a little bit.
“We were in a nice spot; we didn’t have to abuse the tires to maintain our positions. I felt like we had a shot.”
The effort by Stewart-Haas Racing’s flagship team was a bright spot on an otherwise dreary afternoon for the operation’s four-car contingent. Both Kevin Harvick and Danica Patrick had promising runs derailed by crashes, and Kurt Busch‘s car expired suddenly in a fiery, smoky mess as he circulated under caution.
Martinsville marked the final race before a swap of crew chiefs for Busch and Patrick takes effect this weekend at Texas, in hopes of perking up performance for both SHR drivers. Though Greg Zipadelli, Stewart-Haas’ competition director, said Martinsville’s triple dose of dismay tempered his enthusiasm for the No. 14 car’s banner day, he indicated that as Stewart goes, so goes the entire team.
“Let’s hope we can build some momentum here,” Zipadelli said. “Him running better will help everybody else in our organization, so that’s the main focus.”
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