Tony Stewart
- Height: 5-9
- Weight: 170
- Born: May 20, 1971, Rushville, IN
News and Notes
May 7
This week: "Smoke" has never won a race at Darlington. He has two top-fives and eight top-10s in 15 starts and was sixth last year. He is hoping to use Friday night's Nationwide Series race as a chance to figure out the new pavement for the Cup race. "If everything is going all right with both cars and it's not a cluster, yeah, it's a great opportunity," Stewart said. "If it's a cluster, then it's a bad opportunity to be running both series. You can potentially learn about what the track's characteristics are as far as how the balance of the car is going to change through the course of the race. It could certainly be an advantage this week."
Last week: Stewart was fourth at Richmond. "I'm really proud of Zippy (crew chief Greg Zipadelli) and all these guys on the team," Stewart said. "We were absolutely terrible for about 300 laps, and then the last two stops we made a change that really brought this car to life. It was a little too late, but with a little help, it got us a top-five. I'm pretty proud of these guys. That's the whole moral of the story to this team -- we never give up. Even at the end there we may not have been the best car, but we were a fourth-place car at the end. We weren't good the majority of the night, but the last two stops Greg Zipadelli made big changes and we finally found something that the car liked. Most of the day we kept concentrating on an area that normally we have to focus on to be decent at the end of a race, but we went a totally different direction the last quarter of the race and actually got it halfway decent. It was a little too late, but at least we got ourselves in the top five."
Etc.: Stewart was recently asked to share his favorite moment in the All-Star Race at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte -- next on the schedule after Darlington. "When I ran second to Terry Labonte, it was my rookie season and we won the Select and then we won the Open, and that started us at the tail of the All-Star race," Stewart said. "We battled Terry Labonte for the win there and ended up finishing second. That's definitely my highlight."
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