| | YOU'LL GET THERE | Darlington continues to be a mystery to Tony Stewart | |
|  | | CIA Stock Photo | Tony Stewart, sporting his Old Spice colors for last week's Nationwide Race at Richmond. His luck hasn't been too good with The Lady in Black in recent seasons, though. | | By SceneDaily Staff Tony Stewart has two championships and 32 victories on his impressive Cup series resume, but venerable Darlington Raceway, which has been hosting races since 1950, mystifies him.
Stewart does have two top-five finishes at the 1.366-mile track, but that’s his lowest amount on any track that hosts Cup races. In 15 races at Darlington, site of Saturday night's Dodge Challenger 500, he has zero victories and eight top-10 finishes.
“I could probably run backward and run about the same as I do going forward,” Stewart said. “That’s how close I feel like I am to figuring out Darlington. We’ve run decent at Darlington. I mean, I’ve run in the top-five there before, but every time I think I have something figured out, I normally whack the wall and go, ‘Oh boy, I really did figure it out, didn’t I?’ I don’t know that I’ll ever feel like I’ve got Darlington totally figured out.”
Stewart has led only eight laps at Darlington, a mere 0.08 percent of the 9,953 laps he’s led in his Cup career. And seven of those laps came in the 2002 spring race – before he crashed.
“As a race team we’ve kind of struggled there,” Stewart said. “I don’t really believe we’ve had a race there where I felt like we had the car to beat or that we were a top-three car. Typically, we’re a 10th-place car there. It’s a place where we need to be better.
“It’s one of those tracks where if you’re not having a good day, it makes you miserable. But that’s what makes Darlington fun if you do get around there well. It’s hard to be good there, and the guys who are good – it’s a fun day for them. Hopefully we can get ourselves in a position where we can get our balance a little better there and keep working toward being a top-five car instead of just a top-10 car.”
Stewart’s task could be harder – or easier – this time around. Darlington officials repaved the track’s surface after last year's race, making it a new track, in essence.
“From what you hear, the tire’s fairly hard, really fast and speeds are crazy,” said Greg Zipadelli, Stewart’s crew chief at Joe Gibbs Racing. “It’s going to be completely different than what you’ve seen in the past. What I’m hearing is that you run 15 or 20 laps and your fastest lap is 20 laps in.
“With the old surface, if a caution came out, you pitted and put tires on regardless. Now you may see right sides only, you may see no tires, you might see just gas-and-goes, which is completely opposite of what we’ve seen in the past. That’s only second-hand from what I hear as far as the speeds were and how far into the run you were before you actually ran your fastest lap.
“I know Goodyear went down there and tested twice and ran a bunch of stuff, and I guess it was just really fast and fairly smooth in comparison to what it was. It’ll be interesting to see.”
| | Posted May 07, 2008 , 8:34 pm EST
Last Updated May 08, 2008 , 10:45 pm EST | | | | | | |
