Stewart weary as he tries to race into second round
Tony Stewart is at peace with however his final season in NASCAR comes to an end.
There are eight races remaining in his storied career, but he is on the verge of being knocked out of the 16-driver Chase for the Sprint Cup championship field. Stewart is 15th in the standings, so he either needs a win Sunday at Dover International Raceway or the drivers ahead of him in the standings need to have some serious trouble.
Down to his last chance to add to his legacy, Stewart said during an appearance at the NASCAR Hall of Fame that he’ll try to win at Dover and will be disappointed if he doesn’t advance into the second round of the Chase.
But he is so frustrated with the current state of NASCAR he’s ready to hang up his helmet and focus on sprint cars and dirt races.
Stewart had to claw his way to a 23rd-place finish last weekend at New Hampshire, and said nothing he tried could overcome his discomfort with the current rules package and tire combination.
“We’re in an era where technology has taken over,” he said.
Long gone, he noted, are the days when a team could chip away at its race car all weekend and driver talent made a difference on race day. Now, the teams that unload with fast cars on Fridays are typically the ones contending for wins two days later.
“On Friday, you can pretty much tell who is a contender and who is not, and 10 to 15 years ago, it didn’t used to be that way,” he said. “There were guys that could work through the weekend and get things right. Now you’ve either got it or you don’t when you come off the truck on Friday.”
The most frustrating part for the three-time champion is that there’s little he feels he can do as a driver to improve his chances every week.
“That’s part of why I’m ready to do something different – because I can’t make a difference anymore,” he said. “I can’t go out there and do different things with my feet and different things with my hands and run a different line and fix the problem. I used to be able to do that. I can’t do that anymore, and you get so frustrated, you can’t see straight.
“You try everything in the book that you know, and it doesn’t help.”