2009 Key Stats

Feb 10 Stewart is a three-time Daytona winner, but all of those victories came in the 400-mile race in July, including 2009. Those three wins are part of his seven top-five finishes and 12 top-10s in 22 Daytona starts. He has finished outside of the top 10 in just one of his last four Daytona races -- a 20th-place finish in July 2008. He was eighth in last year's Daytona 500. When asked about bump drafting, he said, "Everybody has to keep in mind that is a lot more critical issue at Talladega than it is at Daytona. Daytona, you got handling involved, so you're not able to just get on somebody's bumper. Especially as wavy as this track is, this track has its own personality and character that Talladega doesn't have. Talladega, when they repaved that, it is so smooth that you can get on a bumper and stay there -- it's no big deal. Here you try to get on a guy's bumper through the corner; you got a lot of bumps to go through. That's what makes Daytona so cool. You still have a 2 1/2-mile track here that is a handling track. You have to make your car drive good. Not everybody is going to be able to have that luxury, just being able to push everybody like everybody is talking about. It's more of a Talladega deal than it is for here."
Stewart was the points leader at the end of the Sprint Cup "regular season" -- the first 26 races of the season that determine the 12 drivers in the Chase. He finished sixth in the final standings with four wins, 15 top-five finishes and 23 top-10. He had $8,643,783 in race winnings with an average finish of 10.4.
Stewart welcomes the fact that NASCAR is letting the drivers police each other. "You got to remember the bump-drafting deal hasn't been around for eternity," he said. "I mean, now the cars, the bumpers match up, which is a better situation for us, because if you run into the back of somebody on accident, you don't wreck them automatically. That's what used to happen. It's always been a situation when I started in this deal; the drivers kind of let you know what the etiquette was. That's how you learned. I don't think it's bad for the drivers to kind of get back into that role. It's not that NASCAR is just saying, 'OK, you guys have free rein.' They're still going to police everything. Trust me, they're still the father figures of the group here, and it has to be that way. When it comes to the etiquette side, they're putting it back into the drivers' hands, and I think that's something that we're all appreciative of. I've never been shy about it in the past. I'm not going to be shy about it now."
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