Stewart takes away positives Brant James
Finish disappoints, but driver thinks he’s gaining momentum
Tony Stewart already had a grin under his budding beard when the pickup hauling the three-time Sprint Cup champion and fellow driver Martin Truex Jr. eased to a stop on pit road at Watkins Glen International on Sunday afternoon.
Driver introductions complete, Stewart arrived to a No. 14 Chevrolet surrounded by fans, friends and handlers and a security guard tasked with managing the mania surrounding his return to the racetrack on the one-year anniversary of an incident that changed his life and ended the life of Kevin Ward Jr.
Stewart, the all-time Cup wins leader on the 2.45-mile road course with five, hadn’t taken a green flag here for the last two years. After breaking his leg in a sprint car accident in Iowa in August 2013, he missed the rest of the season. And he withdrew from last year’s race, which was the day after he struck and killed Ward as the 20-year-old walked down the track under caution during an Empire Super Sprints race at Canandaigua Motorsports Park in New York. Lawyers representing the Ward family filed a wrongful death civil suit against Stewart on Friday.
But lustily cheered at every turn this weekend, Stewart relaxed and moved past the emotional milestone.
“I didn’t get your report from last night,” Stewart quipped to a friend standing alongside the truck, wondering why he hadn’t been apprised by text of the previous night’s sprint car results. He returned a few minutes later to continue the conversation before heading toward his car as prerace invocations and the performing of national anthems approached.
“Hey, Tony! It’s me again!” came a female voice from the grandstand behind pit wall, eliciting a hearty laugh from Stewart and all around.
“Yeah, real good all the way around,” Stewart said of the weekend. “Yeah, we had a good weekend, as good as it could be. (I’m) happy to get to race here today. That is something I have been looking forward to and happy about the couple of weeks we have coming up.”
Stewart, who hasn’t won since June 2013 and hasn’t made the Chase for the Sprint Cup since 2012, had qualified third and raced well through the midpoint of the 90-lap event. He was fifth until suffering a failed seal on a rear end gear on lap 56. His car was pushed to the garage for repairs during a caution period, and he finished last.
Still, in a season in which he has at times languished to grasp aerodynamic changes to the race car, at a place that has been the scene of so much personal strife, Sunday felt like progress.
“I guess for me it’s big picture,” Stewart said. “The way our season has been, we’ve picked up. Indy we picked up; Pocono we picked up; we picked up here, in qualifying at all three places for sure. ... The results won’t show it, but I think for us it’s ... granted it’s three totally different disciplines and packages and all that, but I feel like we are starting to gain some momentum.
“Like I said, it won’t show it at the end of the day on the results, but I feel good about our weekend.”