USA TODAY International Edition
Almirola making strides with Stewart-Haas Racing
FONTANA, Calif. – Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner Tony Stewart and teammate Kevin Harvick have praised Aric Almirola for his contributions to the Ford team in the early weeks of his first season in the No. 10 car.
Stewart hasn’t hesitated to talk about the increase in positive input from the No. 10 team since Almirola replaced Danica Patrick as driver.
But Almirola said he’s still feeling his way around in a new environment.
“I think just showing up with a new team every weekend there is so much different about their cars than where I’ve been in the past, so I am literally showing up every weekend with a blank slate,” Almirola said.
“I feel like a rookie driver again. I’m studying driver data and watching old race footage and doing all the things that I’ve always done, but now I have a new team and teammates to lean on.”
Almirola has finishes of 11th, 13th, 10th and seventh in the first month of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season, a good worksheet after moving to SHR from Richard Petty Motorsports in the offseason.
Almirola has repeatedly emphasized the advantages he says he gained by moving to SHR. In six seasons with Petty’s team, he won one race.
“It’s everything,” Almirola said. “You just walk in the shop, and it’s everything. It’s people. It’s resources. It’s wind-tunnel time. It’s engineering. It’s the attention to detail to every part and piece on the race car, and in order to do that you have to have manpower capable of doing that.
“You can’t take a group of 30 people and make them focus on the thousands of parts and pieces that are on the race car, but you can take 400 people and do that, so increased manpower, increased resources and engineering and technology I think pretty much sums it up.”
Almirola had the checkered flag in the season-opening Daytona 500 in his sights before being crashed out by eventual winner Austin Dillon. The negative, obviously, was failing to win his sport’s biggest race, but Almirola said there also were positives.
“I had high hopes and I had high expectations, but the fact that we’ve been able to go out and in the first race of the year come up a half-a-lap away from winning the Daytona 500 and then not let that beat our team down,” he said. “For us to just kind of take the fighter mentality and to bounce back in the next several weeks and have these solid runs, that has been the most gratifying.”