“I don’t know what the deal is with Sonoma”.
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Driving the No. 14 Code 3 Associates/ Mobil 1 Chevrolet SS for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), Stewart took the lead with 22 laps to go and sparred with Denny Hamlin on the last lap to score his 49th career Sprint Cup Series win, his third at Sonoma and his first since winning at Dover (Del.) International Speedway on June 2, 2013. “I had a little too much rear break in Turn 7 and wheel-hopped it two laps in a row”, Tony Stewart said while toweling off.
Busch used his Sonoma victory as a launching pad of sorts, going on to win three of the next four races and ultimately the Sprint Cup championship.
Pole sitter Carl Edwards finished fourth and Martin Truex Jr. was fifth. But one thing that seems assured is that Tony Stewart will leave the sport as he entered it: determined to the very end. He would have to pit sometime.
Anyway, Stewart was stuck in the middle of the pack, running a lackluster 17th at the time. “Instead, it worked out”. He didn’t have to remind Stewart afterward.
The race was far from over, though. Stewart held the top spot at the start/finish line for the rest of the race, but that hardly describes the excitement of the final lap. “Fortunately it worked out well for us today”.
By Lap 109, Hamlin had emerged as the primary threat. Stewart, who grew up in Columbus, Ind., climbed the catchfence with his crew to celebrate the first of his two home-state wins. The win will earn Stewart a spot in the championship field should he crack the top-30 in points, and he’s now 32nd in the standings but only nine points back. That took away our chance to win the race. This year he missed the first eight events of the season after breaking his back in an accident while riding an all-terrain vehicle. Stewart quickly rotated to the front of the field as the other cars darted into the pits for their final stops. Now, half a lap from a redemptive victory, he stumbled.
Hamlin took the lead on lap 50 and was in front most of the laps until Stewart passed him. Hamlin commented on the critical error that lost him the race.
“When he went into 11”, Stewart said, “I was probably more surprised than anybody”. “As good as he was braking into 11 all day, I couldn’t believe he missed the corner”. I’ve made a great living doing it, but at the same time there are other things in life I want to do other than be at a NASCAR track three days a week for 38 weekends out of 52 weeks a year. Then it was Denny Hamlin.
“Dave (crew chief) is unreal”, said Edwards.
It was Tony Stewart’s 8th career road course win in the NASCAR sprint cup series and his 3rd at Sonoma.This was the best race I have seen this season next to the Daytona 500 in February. “I kind of just assumed with a rag laying on the track earlier and they threw a caution, I figured, ‘Well, if there’s anything similar to a rag or larger, they’re going to throw the caution again’. Finishing 17th wasn’t really going to do us much good, so we had to try something”.
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For Stewart, the triumph wasn’t simply an emotional boost. He now has to finish in the top 30 in the point standings to qualify for the Chase. It was a win that was only made possible thanks to a brilliant piece of pit strategy, with Bugarewicz pulling Stewart off the track in anticipation of a debris caution that, sure enough, waved shortly thereafter. And he has his victory. Crew members lined the wall to slap his hand, and teammates Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch were among the drivers to rush to speak to Stewart while he was still inside his auto. Kurt Busch is second and Edwards third.
