Posted on by Staff Report

ALL TITLE STORIES: Johnson | Logano | Busch

 

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of four stories examining why each driver could win the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. Coming Thursday: Why Kyle Busch will win the 2016 championship

 

Carl Edwards will win the title because …

 

Homestead-Miami Speedway is his best track.

The hard(er) part is over — Edwards survived the first nine races of the Chase, outlasting 12 other drivers as the field was narrowed from 16 to our Championship 4. Now he just needs to come out on top at Homestead, and he’s the driver best positioned to do so, given his history at the 1.5-mile facility.

The Joe Gibbs Racing driver has a sterling 9.2 average finish with two wins at the track, and his 568 career laps led are tops among all active drivers, in the Championship 4 or otherwise.

His three 2016 wins are the most he’s had since his nine wins in 2008, a year in which he swept three of the last four to close it out, including a dominant Homestead win.

Oh, and remember how close he was to winning the title in 2011, matching eventual champion Tony Stewart on points only to lose via tiebreaker? There’s no way he lets this slip away from him again.

Posted on by Staff Report

ALL TITLE STORIES: Johnson | Edwards | Busch

 

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of four stories examining why each driver could win the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. Coming Wednesday: Why Carl Edwards will win the 2016 championship

 

Joey Logano will win the title because …

 

He has proven to be the best driver in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format that debuted in 2014 and has a knack for performing when it’s all on the line — plus he’s got all the momentum in the world after a thrilling victory at Phoenix to clinch his berth.

Over the past three seasons, Logano’s seven wins in 29 Chase races tops all drivers.

“I know we can do it,” Logano said after his victory in the desert. “I don’t feel like it’s a long shot like it was last time. It was my first time there, (and I was thinking) ‘I’m racing for a championship, oh, my God, what’s going to happen?’ This time I feel like we’ve been here before.”

A quick glance at Logano’s Homestead numbers (17.7 average finish) will lead you to believe he might not be the favorite, but a closer look shows that he has a 9.3 average finish since he joined Team Penske in 2013.

That figure is just slightly off Jimmie Johnson‘s average finish of 9.0 for best among the remaining Chase drivers during that same period.

 

And if seven wins in 29 Chase races becomes 8-for-30?

 

That’d result in title No. 1.

Posted on by Staff Report

RELATED: Buy tickets for Homestead-Miami Championship Weekend

 

ALL TITLE STORIES: Logano | Edwards | Busch

 

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of four stories examining why each driver could win the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship.

Coming Tuesday: Why Joey Logano will win the 2016 championship

 

Jimmie Johnson will win the title because …

 

It’s time. The greatest driver of his generation, and perhaps of all time — he certainly belongs in the conversation — sits on the doorstep of history. A title Sunday at Miami would give him seven, tying the all-time mark with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.

RELATED: How Johnson won his six titles

 

Most didn’t think Jimmie would be here. He won twice early in the season, but his seemingly annual summer slump turned into a full-blown regular-season slump. His speed was off. Something was missing.

 

Months of work in the wind tunnel paid off in time for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. The No. 48 has resumed its pace as a car at the front of the field. Winning at Charlotte Motor Speedway to open the Round of 12 ensured, for the first time in three years, that Johnson would be in the Round of 8.

 

Winning at Martinsville in the Round of 8 opener then ensured the team an extra two full weeks to think through its Homestead car, setup and strategy. Think about that. Crew chief Chad Knaus, one of the most shrewd men in the garage, has had more time than any of the other championship drivers to strategize.

 

Can you really bet against them?

Posted on by Zack Albert

RELATED: Full race results | Final standings


HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Kyle Busch‘s dream of becoming a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion became reality last year. This season, the difficulty of repeating at the sport’s highest level hit home.


After a late succession of restarts and a shuffle of pit strategies, Busch wound up sixth in Sunday’s season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, five positions behind newly crowned seven-time champ Jimmie Johnson. It was the culmination of an eventful 268 laps that required a rally from an unscheduled mid-race pit stop and an 11th-hour visit to pit road in a last-ditch effort to gain ground.


“You just keep going through what’s going on and make the most of your opportunities,” Busch said post-race. “We did that. We did that all year long. We did the right things sometimes and here tonight we felt like we were kind of behind the eight ball a few times, and then it looked like it would be ours to lose and somehow we just weren’t able to execute there and do a good enough job at the end.”

Busch led just one of the 268 laps, but spent much of the early stages among the top five. A tire issue forced him to pit road on the 137th circuit, knocking him one lap down and to 21st in the running order. The unscheduled stop left him out of the front-runners’ pit sequence, but he was able regain his lead-lap standing when a fortuitous third caution flag flew 34 laps later.


Busch remained in contention until a rash of late yellows scrambled the order. Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Carl Edwards crashed out of contention 11 laps from the end, and the rapid-fire restarts that followed presented an opportunity for Busch’s crew chief, Adam Stevens, to shake up the strategy.

RELATED: Edwards, Logano reflect on late-race contact, wreck

After restarting third in the inside lane with little benefit, Busch’s No. 18 Toyota pitted out of fifth place ahead of the deciding overtime restart, placing him 13th but with fresher tires for the final shootout.


“Once we restarted third on the bottom and didn’t get a good restart and lost that ground, we were going to be sixth or fifth, three rows back, and we weren’t going to be able to do anything from there,” Stevens explained. “We knew we were going to give up some track position, but we weren’t going to make up any ground from where we were at.”


Busch bypassed seven cars in the final two laps, but a repeat of his title-clinching victory on the 1.5-mile track was not in the offing. The team’s consolation was wrapping a productive four-win season with a playoff run built on remarkable consistency.


“It’s been kind of an odd race, a kind of a microcosm of our odd season, I guess,” Stevens said. “I’m proud of the effort, proud of Kyle and just didn’t have the best car tonight, but still found ourselves with a chance and then all hell broke loose. So yeah, you’ll have that.”

Posted on by Zack Albert

RELATED: Full race results | Final standings

MORE: Edwards, Logano tangle with 10 to go

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Carl Edwards‘ 2016 season and his chance at championship redemption ended with a walk instead of a drive.

After emerging from the heavy wreck that left his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 Toyota backward and crumpled against the Turn 1 wall, Edwards — physically unhurt but smarting instead with disappointment — eschewed the customary ambulance ride to the infield care center for a purposeful jaunt back toward pit road.

“I had a lot of thoughts on that walk,” Edwards said, his title hopes dashed. “That was — just it’s hard to — you put so much into this and so many people push so hard and you don’t get opportunities like this very often, so I just hope that pretty quickly I can get over the frustration and look at this for what it is.”

WATCH: Edwards: ‘That’s just racing‘

A dicey restart on the 257th of 268 laps of Sunday’s season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 denied breakthrough championships for both Edwards and Joey Logano at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Contact with Logano’s Team Penske No. 22 Ford sent Edwards’ car hard into the inside wall, triggering a major pileup that left Edwards with a 34th-place result. Logano continued on with slight damage and wound up fourth, the top Chase driver behind race winner and newly crowned seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson.



Edwards had restarted second alongside race leader Kyle Larson with Logano lined up third behind him. When Logano pointed his car to the inside lane, Edwards moved to block his advances, both cars dipping toward the track apron. Neither driver budged, and Edwards’ car took the brunt of their coming-together.



Edwards dismounted and walked. His first stop along the path was a visit to the No. 22 pit box to offer his side of the incident to Todd Gordon, Logano’s crew chief. Gordon said he had been tipped off by team owner Roger Penske that Edwards’ intentions were amicable. After their brief discussion, the veteran crew chief said his estimation of Edwards had only grown.

“That’s a stand-up guy right there,” Gordon said. “That’s a stand-up, hard-bones racer. Came up, shook my hand and said, ‘You know what, guys. That’s hard racing. I didn’t realize he was that far inside of me,’ and he told me, ‘with your short-run speed, I needed to block.’ So he said race hard, and that’s just a stand-up guy. I’ve earned a lot of respect for Carl today. I respect him a lot, but I don’t know that there’s many guys who would do that.”



Said Edwards: “I just wanted to make sure that they knew and they could tell Joey — I don’t know if Joey cares or not; I assume he does — but I just wanted to make sure he knew that was just racing in my opinion and that’s hard racing and I wished them luck.”

Logano fell to eighth after his run-in with Edwards, lost no additional ground in a pit stop, but was unable to overtake Johnson’s surge on the two restarts that followed. He also chalked up his fateful contest with Edwards to the heat of competition, saying that he appreciated his gesture to talk with his No. 22 pit crew.



“Carl’s a hard racer and he knows what we’re racing for and knows why we do that,” said Logano, who also fell short in the Championship 4 finale two years ago. “I’d like to talk to him personally because I think it’s cool that he understands it. I mean, it hurt both of us, right? It wasn’t like I was trying to spin him out. I was underneath him and we were just chasing him down the race track. I don’t blame him for running the block. That’s for the championship. Just didn’t make it happen.”



Edwards led 47 laps in what represented his best chance to win a NASCAR premier series title since his 2011 loss on a tiebreaker to Tony Stewart, who retired from full-time competition after Sunday’s 400-miler. Instead of punctuating his journey through the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs this year with his patented backflip celebration, Edwards spent much of the late-race red flag by sheepishly grinning through interviews and then shaking hands with crew chief Dave Rogers and the rest of his No. 19 crew as he headed into the offseason.



The walk wasn’t the winning drive that Edwards wanted, but Rogers said his team had nothing to lament.



“I thought that we played the game like a champion would play it,” Rogers said. “We set our goal to go home with no regrets, and we’re going home with no regrets. That goal’s accomplished. We’re going home a little short of the championship, but I think they knew we were here tonight.”

Posted on by Zack Albert

RELATED: France talks business, family at conference


HOMESTEAD, Fla. — NASCAR Chairman & CEO Brian France reaffirmed his endorsement of stock-car racing’s postseason format Sunday, saying he “wouldn’t change a thing” about the spirited competition created by the elimination system.


France’s remarks came Sunday in his annual “State of the Sport” question-and-answer session at Homestead-Miami Speedway, site of the season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) that will determine the champion of its premier series.


NASCAR adopted the 10-race Chase playoff system for its top division in 2004. After 10 seasons of determining a series champion by cumulative points in the postseason, NASCAR competition officials introduced the current format with three rounds of eliminations and a four-driver championship shootout in the season finale.


That format was adopted this year by NASCAR’s other two national tours, a move that France said produced worthy champions this weekend in Daniel Suarez (XFINITY Series) and Johnny Sauter (Camping World Truck Series).


“That’s a big deal for auto racing. We’re bold enough to do that,” France said. “Anywhere in the world, that doesn’t always happen. Our drivers have been great because it requires a different mindset to compete at this level. They’re up to it. They may have had some reservations early on, but they’re up to it, so it’s great.”


France also addressed potential enhancements to the postseason structure, including the notion of greater incentives or rewards for regular-season performance.


“I think that’s a fair thing for us to consider, to make sure that the regular season is as important as it is,” France said. “So I don’t know exactly how we’ll do that, but we’ll look at that.”


MORE: Suarez makes history | Sauter claims Truck Series title

Among the other topics discussed in France’s 17-minute interview session:

 

— France lauded Sprint, the outgoing sponsor for NASCAR’s premier series, for its contributions over a 13-year association with the sport. The chairman and CEO said the search and negotiations for a new entitlement sponsor were ongoing.

 

“It’s taken a little longer than I thought, but it’s also a big agreement and an important agreement,” France said. “It’s not just dollars and cents, but it’s a fit for us. We don’t want to announce anything certainly around this weekend. We’re in a good spot with that, I believe, but we’ll have to see how it finally plays out.”

 

— France singled out Suarez’s accomplishments in clinching his first national series title as an affirmation of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity efforts.

 

“We’re very proud that it validates our diversity plan in a significant way,” France said. “All kinds of conversations on what we’ve said through the years is these things take time to find the kind of talent that can actually compete at a high level on the biggest stages, and he’s done that.”

 

MORE: Suarez’s road to title

 

— Regarding the charter system that NASCAR introduced this season in the hopes of providing team owners a return on their investment in the sport, France said that completing the deal during the offseason was part of a longer process.

 

“The things that we’re going to be able to do are going to take many, many years to achieve our end goal,” he said, “which is to really lower costs in the industry by working with our interests better aligned with the teams, that’s number one, which will affect their values going forward.”

 

— France said that recent guidelines designed to limit premier series drivers’ participation in XFINITY and Truck Series competition were a welcome addition to the NASCAR Rule Book. The rules, introduced last month ahead of the 2017 season, took effect to a lesser degree in those series’ finales this weekend, something France said worked “on a lot of different fronts.”

 

“Cup drivers obviously were able to compete in events, but you saw the championship get settled down to the series participants,” France said. “I think it worked perfectly. We talked about it for a long time. I’m glad we did it.”

MORE: Specifics on new guidelines

Posted on by George Winkler

RELATED: Chase Grid

The Championship 4 is finally here, or, if you’re more like me, it’s hard to believe it’s already here and another season is about to be put in the books. How will the final chapter read when it’s written on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway?

Will the story be Jimmie Johnson tying Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt with his seventh NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship?

Will it be Carl Edwards, vindicating himself after falling short to Tony Stewart in 2011 and cementing his status as Hall of Fame-worthy?

Or will Kyle Busch become the first back-to-back champion since Johnson reeled off five in a row from 2006-2010?

Or finally, might it be Joey Logano riding a recent hot streak and Chase excellence to his first title after disappointment the past two seasons?

It all will be decided starting at 2:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, of course, but before that, let’s run the numbers and give you an early look at who might pen this best seller.

Like we did for previous playoff rounds, we’ll look at results for average finish, then move on to laps led before unveiling the final prediction:

Average Finish

Rank Driver Points
1. Joey Logano 10
T-2. Kyle Busch 7
T-2. Carl Edwards 7
4. Jimmie Johnson 6

How we got the numbers: We assigned a point value to each Chase driver relative to how he finished in each of the following categories: average finish this season, average finish in the last five races and average finish at the Championship 4 track. For example, if a driver was tops in average finish this season, he got 4 points; second place got 3 points and so on down to last place, which got one point. Then, we added up the point values each driver earned in the three categories to arrive at the above list. Here is the top driver and bottom driver in each category:

Average finish this season:
Leader: Joey Logano, 10.7
Follower: Jimmie Johnson, 14.3

Average finish last five races:
Leader: Joey Logano, 3.2
Follower: Carl Edwards, 17.4

Average finish at Championship 4 track:
Leader: Carl Edwards, 9.2
Follower: Kyle Busch, 21.1

Analysis: If you’re looking to ride the hot hand, Joey Logano is your man. He’s finished in the top three in four of the past five races and has an average finish of 3.2 in that span. … However, Logano has the best average finish for the season, too. His mark of 10.7 is slightly better than Kyle Busch‘s 11.6, so Logano has been relatively consistent. … Carl Edwards holds the edge at Miami, where he leads the Championship 4 drivers in average finish and wins with two. The glimmer of hope for the rest of the field is that Edwards did that damage a while ago with his wins coming in 2008 and 2010.

Now, let’s take a look at how the drivers fared in laps led.

Laps Led

Rank Driver Points
1. Carl Edwards 9
2. Kyle Busch 8
3. Jimmie Johnson 7
4. Joey Logano 6

How we got the numbers: Same as with average finish, we assigned a point value to each Chase driver relative to how he finished in each of the following categories: laps led this season, laps led in the last five races and laps led at the Championship 4 track. Then, we added up the point values to arrive at the above list. Here is the top driver and bottom driver in each category:

Laps led this season:
Leader: Kyle Busch, 1,378
Follower: Joey Logano, 697

Laps led last five races:
Leader: Joey Logano, 304
Follower: Kyle Busch, 7

Laps led at Championship 4 track:
Leader: Carl Edwards, 568
Follower: Joey Logano, 72

Analysis: Kyle Busch hasn’t been out front much lately, but for the season his car has arguably been the best. He might be the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing who’s ready to pounce on the other Championship 4 competitors now that Miami has arrived. Plus, he was the fastest in qualifying among the Chase drivers. … This isn’t the seven Jimmie Johnson wants, as in seven points for his stats in laps led. So in order for Johnson to win his seventh title on Sunday, he’ll need to buck the statistical trends, like having the second-fewest laps led this season and at Homestead among the Chase drivers.

FINAL PREDICTION

Rank Driver Points
T-1. Joey Logano 16
T-1. Carl Edwards 16
3. Kyle Busch 15
4. Jimmie Johnson 13

Final prediction: For the first time since we’ve been doing the predictions, there’s a tie at the top — and either way, it appears as though there will be a first-time winner who gets crowned on Sunday. But this isn’t the NFL where ties are allowed, so let’s break away from the formula briefly and just make a call.

Edwards has the history behind him at Miami and has shown speed this weekend. However, he has the worst average finish in the past five races and his win at Texas saved him from a 36th-place finish at Martinsville.

For Logano, he’s been hot lately but has the worst history at Miami with the fewest laps led among the Championship 4 drivers.

As far as intangibles, Edwards has a slightly better pit crew, but he might feel more pressure to overcome what happened in 2011. Plus, this is a numbers column, so we’re not keen on using intangibles as a big factor.

Sentimentally, I’d like to see Edwards win because he’s from the same town where I went to college. But in the numbers game, one must be heartless.

There’s no denying that Logano has run up front more in recent races, has led more laps recently and has been more dominant overall. So despite Edwards’ edge in history, the pick is for Logano to write a new chapter of history on Sunday that includes capping the “Golden Year” of 50 for Team Penske.

Posted on by Holly Cain

RELATED: Results | Chase Grid | End-of-season standings


HOMESTEAD, Fla. — The three championship-eligible drivers who didn’t hoist the XFINITY Series trophy Saturday evening stood on Homestead-Miami Speedway‘s pit road looking both perplexed and disappointed.


A restart with three laps remaining bogged down the field and allowed Daniel Suarez to emerge from the front-running pack of contenders and race off to the win and his first NASCAR championship — a first for a Latin American driver.


RELATED: The road to a title | Community reacts to Suarez’s win


For that final restart Cole Whitt, who had run mid-pack all night, stayed off pit road to inherit the lead once the race returned to green. However, he spun his tires and was unable to accelerate, affecting Suarez’s competition as they were lined up behind Whitt’s struggling No. 14.


“I’d love to hear an explanation from him and the crew chief,” said Joe Gibbs Racing driver Erik Jones, who finished ninth after getting caught up behind Whitt. “It just didn’t make any sense. Staying out there on old tires with the four championship guys right behind. I’d love to hear why he didn’t go in the restart. There’s a lot of questions I’d like to have answered.”


The other XFINITY Series championship-eligible drivers, Elliott Sadler (who finished third) and Justin Allgaier (who finished sixth), were similarly frustrated with the situation.


For his part, Whitt told reporters in the XFINITY Series garage his team didn’t have any more tires left to change and that he tried to move out of the way of the title contenders on the restart.


“It’s as simple as the fact that we just didn’t have any tires,” said Whitt, who finished 18th. “We didn’t expect everybody to come in like that, and I was like, I knew this was going to be a handful.


“I thought if I was on the outside I would have the most room for them to go underneath me if anything happened and I couldn’t get going. With him (Sadler) hitting me, I couldn’t get going and it was just making me spin the tires worse. Obviously if you could redo it, you would change the way you did it. It’s not like we were out there to screw anybody over.”


RELATED: Sadler: ‘It’s heartbreaking’


It was of little consolation to the three championship runners-up, who all were among the top six on the final restart.


Suarez was behind Sadler on the older tires and able to get around quickly to take off for the flag. Both Jones and Allgaier were caught up behind Whitt’s slower car.


“The dejection of knowing the race came down to three laps. …” Allgaier said, after taking a few private moments to digest the outcome.

WATCH: Allgaier upbeat despite loss


“That call (by Whitt’s team) may work at Daytona and Talladega or somewhere and put you in a good spot but tonight, with what was at stake with all four of us going to restart in the top-five … the battle for the championship was going to be epic. It’s a shame.


“Tonight doesn’t define our season, though. These guys at JR Motorsports have done an amazing job all year long. To come down to this moment is so disappointing. We all held our heads really high that we were able to make the final four and to come into here with the great opportunity to fight for the championship.”


MORE: Whitt explains his side of things


After having a few minutes to digest the situation, Sadler explained that the toughest part of the night was finishing as XFINITY Series championship runner-up for the third time in his career (2011 and 2012) after being ranked either first or second in the standings for all but one week this season. But he insisted he will leave South Florida more encouraged.


“From (his team owners) Dale (Earnhardt Jr.) and Kelley (Earnhardt Miller) all the way down through everybody in the shop, they work their butts off to make sure we had a legitimate shot at holding up that trophy tonight, and that’s what hurts the most is you don’t know until the checkered flag if you’re going to hold the trophy or not,” Sadler said.


“It’s just part of this format, but it’s great for the fans. I think it’s great for our sport. It shows a lot of emotion and I think tonight’s race played out the way it should be. But all four of us really raced hard with each other up front and Daniel just got the better of us tonight.”


Posted on by Holly Cain

MORE: Drivers give best Stewart stories | 14 Days of Smoke

 

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — The fans were gathered four and five deep around Tony Stewart‘s garage stall at Homestead-Miami Speedway following Saturday’s opening NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice. Some posed for photos at the rear of Stewart’s No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet, others stood farther back shouting encouragement toward “The People’s Champion” as he is affectionately known.

 

When Stewart left the garage to walk to his motorhome, the huge swarm surrounded him and walked, too. People young and old stretched and contorted to get alongside the three-time NASCAR champ as he walked away. Two even followed in motorized wheelchairs. Dozens asked for autographs and photographs, dropping out of the mobile mob one-by-one and flashing wide grins as Stewart acknowledged their well wishes or signed a photo.

 

Despite the crowd, Stewart never stopped moving forward. And, he has promised, that will continue in all ways.

 

His impending retirement from Sprint Cup Series racing following Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400 will mark the end of an 18-year stock car career that has earned the 45-year old three premier series championships and 49 victories — including one this season at Sonoma Raceway. He is a certain first-ballot NASCAR Hall of Famer.

 

But Stewart has steadfastly maintained climbing out of the driver’s seat is not so much an ending as another beginning. He will still be around.

 

And while others may be getting emotional, Stewart appears to be, quite literally, taking it all in stride.

 

“I don’t know that I’m really going to miss anything because you know the great thing is I still get to see the people and be around the people,” said Stewart, who will remain active in NASCAR in his job as co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing. “That is probably the best part of the whole deal. I’m still going to be around the sport. I’m still going to be active. If you don’t think being an owner is competitive I can show you a bunch of different cases where it’s competitive being an owner. 

 

“That part of it is not going to change, so I don’t think I’m going to miss a lot.” 

 

Then came that trademark Stewart snark.

 

“The thing that I’m not going to miss is 9 a.m. practices on Saturday morning,” he added with a grin. “So, I never have to get up for a 9 a.m. practice ever again.”

 

Stewart certainly seemed to be taking his final race weekend in stride, alternating between work — he advanced to the final round of qualifying and will start his final race 11th — and taking in the handshakes, pats on the back and loud cheers he is receiving with every step around the track.

 

He is unable to walk two feet without another race official, fellow driver or adoring fan approaching to offer a “Good luck” and a “Thank you.”

 

On Friday, more than a hundred fans gathered to look at a Stewart show car, positioned for a photo in Homestead-Miami Speedway‘s Victory Lane.

 

When Stewart finally appeared an hour later, more than 60 crew members from the garage — some now sporting Roush Fenway Racing shirts, others from Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, Chip Ganassi Racing — were there … all people who worked with Stewart at some point in his NASCAR career.

 

Nearly 30 drivers in Sunday’s Sprint Cup season finale have presented Stewart a helmet. One of them is from Sunday’s championship contender Carl Edwards, who gave Stewart the helmet Edwards wore in 2011 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Stewart won the race and also the title in a tiebreaker with Edwards. Many consider it the greatest title run of Stewart’s career.

 

MORE: Edwards gives personal retirement gift to Stewart

 

Michele DeBoer, 49, stood in the garage across from Stewart’s stall, decked out in a No. 14 T-shirt. She has special and specific clothing to wear in his honor for every day of the race weekend. She made the trip to Homestead from New Jersey to honor Stewart in his final start, after first “adopting” him way back in 1999 when the then-rookie Stewart drove a Home Depot-sponsored car. She was an associate for the store at the time and had never really followed the sport until she started following Stewart.

 

DeBoer and her sister saved up for this trip to South Florida so she could be a part of Stewart’s goodbye. They even booked their return flight for Tuesday instead of Monday, just in case weather delayed the race. Seeing Stewart off is that important.

 

And they are not alone.

 

“I think it was his smirk that got me; I love it,” DeBoer recalled of pledging her Stewart allegiance nearly two decades ago. “I love his feistiness, his passion for doing whatever you have to do to win. No other driver seems to have it like Tony. I know every race, he can come from 40th place and still win.

 

“I’m happy for him,” DeBoer said, smiling even as a tear started to roll down her face. “I’m glad he’s retiring from NASCAR when he wants to. He’s ready. I’m not.

 

Stewart’s longtime friend, former crew chief and SHR’s current director of competition Greg Zipadelli, said he understands the sentiment. He has worked alongside Stewart for many of the past 18 years — at both Joe Gibbs Racing and now at SHR.

 

Standing in the garage Saturday morning, Zipadelli conceded he hadn’t truly thought of the finality of Stewart’s retirement from Cup competition until he and his wife Nan talked about it on the drive from the airport earlier this week.

 

“At that point, it became real to me, how much has happened,” Zipadelli said. “For me, I still think he is one of the greatest. I still think he could do it. I understand, he’s tired of certain things and wants to move on and enjoy his life.

 

“You live a lot of your life here. You enjoy what you do. But he wants to dirt race, there’s a lot of things he hasn’t been able to do and now he will be able to do. From that standpoint, I think he’s making the right decision for himself and at the end of the day, it’s all about himself, not everybody else. You have to take care of yourself.

 

“At his age, where he’s at, he’s still good enough to do what he wants and be competitive at it. My hat’s off to him. I respect him for doing what he feels is right, not what everyone else would like him to do.”

Stewart’s own father, Nelson, couldn’t agree more. Having brought Stewart into the sport as a young boy and watched him win championships in open-wheel racing from IndyCars to the Triple Crown of midgets, Silver Crown and sprints to being crowned one of NASCAR’s very best three different times.

 

“It’s sentimental, but it’s not sad for me because I want him to be happy,” Nelson Stewart said. “Anybody that has kids, that is the main thing, you want your kids to be happy. And I want to see him happy. He’s had hell for the last three years and I just want to see him happy. So if that’s what he wants to do — I don’t care if he wants to go snow skiing — that’s the way I feel. He has nothing to prove to anybody and he’s done practically everything. I just want him to go and enjoy himself.”

 

In a way, Nelson Stewart says, it couldn’t be more fitting than having Stewart end his career at the venue where he capped one of the most amazing championship runs in the sport’s history.

 

However, Stewart’s final corner pass to win his last race (at Sonoma) will always hold a special place in his father’s heart.

 

“That, to me, was closure for the last three years,” Nelson Stewart said, referring to severe injuries and off-track incidents Stewart has suffered through, forcing him to miss races in three of the past four seasons. “That’s what it was, more than a victory to me. And right where I was standing in the pits, right across on track, is where Tony passed Denny (Hamlin) back for the win. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

 

It is touchingly ironic that for such an accomplished and celebrated champion, Stewart will be remembered as much for his generosity, kindness and sense of humor.

 

Yes, Stewart still bristles about not winning a Daytona 500 or Southern 500 trophy, but that disappointment gives way to a sense of great satisfaction for an incredible career and fortunate standing as one of NASCAR’s best ever.

“In a perfect world, yes, I would have loved to be able to cross those off the list,” Stewart said. “But at the same time, I look at the big picture and it was pretty damn cool to just have the opportunity to go race those races. I still feel like it was winning that first Brickyard 400. I would say that is probably top of the list and I think this race in 2011, I don’t know how you can top that either.

 

“I think there are always points in everybody’s life you wish you had done something a little bit different. I’ve had a lot of those moments for sure that if I could go back and redo it I would love to do it over again. 

 

“I think how everything shook out at the end, I’m pretty proud of that and happy about it.”

 

And truly, how could you ask for anything more?

 

Posted on by Staff Report

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