Bristol Tony Stewart Quotes
TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT IMPALA SS, Finished fourth moved to second in the NNCS point standings with two races remaining before the start of the Chase:
ON LAST SET OF TIRES HELPING MOVE FORWARD IN THE FIELD TOWARD THE END OF THE RACE: “I don’t know what was so much different about them, but they were a lot better and had a lot more grip. We just got going there at the end. Got a good run and got by the No. 88, the No. 2 and the No.12.
ON RACING ON THE NEW BRISTOL SURFACE: “This was an ace job. This place is awesome. It was fun tonight. You could go from the bottom to the top. I don’t know what it was like to watch, but hopefully the race fans had as much fun as it was to drive tonight. You could run all over the race track, that was what was so much fun about it. I can tell you, I don’t know what it was like from the outside of the car to watch it, but at least from the inside it was fun. You could race. Guys weren’t running over each other to pass each other. It fun race from inside the car. It is fun when you just get to race. Tonight was a race where you could do that. You could work the outside, you could work the inside, you could go and race people here tonight instead of the normal just bump people out of the way and go on by. It was fun to race like that.
“It was fun I thought. It is hard to tell what it was like to watch on TV and you guys to watch, but from the inside the car it was awesome. You weren’t having to root guys out of the way, you could race. That was what made it fun. It didn’t matter if we finished 10th or 15th, I was having fun tonight. The most fun I have had at Bristol in my career. Even the night I won wasn’t as much fun as tonight was. You could just race all over the race track. We have to thank everybody here at Bristol Motor Speedway for doing what they did. It worked and it worked well, they didn’t something very productive here.
“I can’t give it a better grade than A-plus. I mean, I was so fun to drive on tonight. It is just the most fun I have ever had driving on Bristol.
“It was kind of nice not to have to move people out of the way. That was what was fun tonight. We had 120 some-odd laps at the beginning of the race without a caution; we only had two cautions almost to half way. It was a fun race. I wish we could have gotten to the front a little earlier but, whether we finished 15th, 10th or fourth, it was just fun.
ON HOW DIFFERENT CAR WAS PERFORMING AS YOU STARTED MOVING UP THROUGH THE FIELD: “We could run with those guys. We had enough of a gap behind us that gave us the flexibility to move around and try some different lines and found some ways to get the thing to cut through the corner and really square my exit off where I could really dig up off the corner. I could have settled for eighth place real easy and feel really proud that we came back and finished fourth.
“We had the opportunity to move around and didn’t have any pressure from behind. I couldn’t get by these guys on the bottom, so I just started trying the top and found some grip up there. I think everybody had gotten so committed to the bottom or all the way to the top and I kind of found a sweet spot there in the middle to get around.”