Stewart is nearly out of Chase, but team wants to help
This isn’t the way his fans wanted to see Tony Stewart end his career, on the verge of exiting NASCAR’s Sprint Cup playoff with a whimper.
Stewart is in the bottom four of the Chase standings and will be eliminated Sunday at Dover International Speedway if he doesn’t pull off some sort of miracle before the field is trimmed from 16 to 12 drivers. He’s retiring at the end of this season, and his fans wanted to see a solid run toward a fourth NASCAR season title.
Instead, Stewart opened the Chase with a 16th-place finish at Chicago, and he was 23rd last Sunday at New Hampshire. Chris Buescher is the only Chase driver below him in the standings, and Stewart might just need to win at Dover to advance to the second round.
Kevin Harvick, who won at New Hampshire to earn an automatic berth into the second round, isn’t counting out his teammate. With Harvick secure and Kurt Busch 11th in the standings, Stewart-Haas Racing can put an emphasis on Stewart’s performance at Dover.
“He can go to any racetrack and win,” Harvick said. “He’s Tony Stewart. I wouldn’t bet against him. We’ll do everything we can to help him get to the point where he needs to be to try to move on.”
Stewart made the Chase thanks to a victory in June on the road course at Sonoma, Calif., snapping an 84-race winless streak dating to a win at Dover in June 2013. But as the Chase approached he fell off again. Stewart has not finished higher than 16th in the past six races, with an average finish of 26.3.
He has three career wins at Dover, the last during that 2013 march to the title.
Buescher, Jamie McMurray and Austin Dillon also are on the brink of elimination. McMurray’s Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Kyle Larson, who many thought would go deep into the playoffs, isn’t secure, either. He’s 12th — only five points ahead of the elimination spot.
Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. have advanced with victories. But the standings are so close among the rest of the field that a mechanical problem, a crash or simply poor strategy could end the Chase for any driver.
Only six points separate fifth-place Joey Logano from 11th-place Kurt Busch, and no one feels all that safe.
Chase Elliott is ninth in points and finished third at Chicago, but he’s hardly breathing easy.
When asked what he expects from Dover, he was blunt: “I feel like it’s an upcoming race and we need to do a better job.”