Tony Stewart brought an end to what he described as 'some squirrelly weeks' as he rose, Phoenix-like, from the ashes with a fine fourth-place finish in last weekend's Checker Auto Parts 500 in Arizona.
The Home Depot Chevrolet ace has endured a rough run in the NASCAR Nextel Cup of late – with a best result of eleventh place from the last three outings – but he overcame a lacklustre practice showing and lowly qualifying position of 21st to fight his way through the field at Phoenix International Raceway, despite a couple of lengthy pit-stops along the way. What's more, his eleventh top five finish of the 2007 campaign was enough to hoist Stewart up a spot into fifth in the title chase, a mere 16 points adrift of Kyle Busch in fourth and 66 clear of sixth-placed Matt Kenseth with one round remaining, the season-ending Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on 18 November.
“We got a good top five out of today and I'm very happy with that,” the 36-year-old stated afterwards. “I'm very happy for all of the guys, and most of all for Greg Zipadelli. He's the one most responsible for today. We made a huge, wholesale change after happy hour (final practice), and that's why we're the longest crew chief/driver combination in the Nextel Cup. We have trust in each other, and when he told me what he was going to do, I knew to trust it.”
Up into the top ten within the space of just 40 of the race's 312 laps, the pit-stop problems would slightly hamper Stewart's charge, but as his #20 Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) machine hit its sweet spot, the two-time Nextel Cup king's tenacity and persistence slowly paid off, and he would run as high as second before seeing off the threats of Ryan Newman, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jnr all the way to the chequered flag.
“You can't pass 80 cars and expect to win the race,” he explained. “We got ourselves in such a bind there that we had to run too hard, and then we wore the tyres out, and when you get into a situation where you need to play strategy, you can't do the right things because you've got to make up the time you lost on pit road.
“But we still got ourselves in position at the end, and the good thing is these guys don't quit. They never give up – even after a couple of bad stops – and that's all you can ask for.
“Our car wasn't even a top ten car, but with those changes here we were running up front with a shot to win the race. We've had some squirrelly weeks the last couple of races, but to look on the board and see us in fourth is not bad by any means.”
Stewart's JGR teammates – J.J. Yeley and Denny Hamlin – came home 14th and 16th respectively.
