Channeling the Blues Brothers in Joliet
ATLANTA – Jake and Elwood Blues, better known as the Blues Brothers, broke out of Joliet, Ill., in the summer of 1979 and led Chicago police on an inner-city chase that ended with a siege on the Daly Plaza in downtown.
Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet for Joe Gibbs Racing, will look to channel the Blues Brothers as he uses Joliet’s Chicagoland Speedway as his breakout venue to seize the checkered flag for the first time this year in Sunday’s USG Sheetrock 400 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series race.
Stewart’s No. 20 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS is a marked improvement over Jake and Elwood’s 1974 Dodge Monaco. Despite Elwood’s boasting that his car had, “…a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant. It’s got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It’s a model made before catalytic converters so it’ll run good on regular gas,” Stewart’s Home Depot Chevrolet puts out over 800 horsepower and hits 200-plus mph.
The two-time Nextel Cup champion has put that power to the pavement numerous times at Chicagoland, winning the pole in 2003 and the race in 2004. In fact, Stewart is second in laps led at Chicagoland, as he’s paced the field for 276 laps, 48 more laps than third-best Kevin Harvick – winner of the first two Nextel Cup races held at Chicagoland (2001 and 2002).
Stewart was ready to log his fifth straight top-five finish at Chicagoland last year until a thirsty fuel cell forced him to relinquish his third-place position and pit for gas with four laps to go. The result was a disappointing 32nd-place finish.
Stewart has endured more than his share of disappointments in 2007. Whether it’s been getting bested by other’s fuel mileage, bounced out of contention by mechanical failures, or bashed by accidents, Stewart has yet to visit victory lane in a points-paying Nextel Cup race. His trophies from wins earlier this year at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway in the Budweiser Shootout and the Gatorade Duel – both non-point races – are all he has to show for his efforts.
Stuck on career win No. 29 since dominating at Texas Motor Speedway last November – a span of 20 races – Stewart and Co. are intent on getting win No. 30 and their first of the season.
With Sunday’s USG Sheetrock 400 Stewart’s next opportunity to score that much-desired win, expect Chicagoland’s victory lane to be eyed by the orange-and-black attack the same way the Chicago police department eyed the back of Jake and Elwood’s Dodge Monaco.
After a couple of disappointing races, are you looking forward to going to Chicagoland?
“We’ll see what happens. We always seem to run well at Chicago. We’re cautiously optimistic that we’re going to run well. We need a good week, that’s for sure. The good thing is that the morale of the team is up. This team has battled adversity so many times that it takes a lot to beat this team down.”
A lot is being made out of the fact that you haven’t won yet this year. Is it as big of a deal as it seems?
“It’s not like we’re not running well, because we are. We’ve just had some circumstances that haven’t gone our way. You’ll have that. We’re decent in points and we tend to be a late-blooming team anyhow. We plan on doing the same thing we do every week. We’re not changing our approach. Every week our goal is to win the race, and that’s not going to change. That’s how we’ve won two championships. If we go out and win the race, the points take care of themselves. It’s always been that way, and it always will be that way. We’ll try to go out and win the race each weekend, and at the end of the day we’ll look at the point standings and see where we’re at. If we don’t win, we’ll try to get as many points as possible.”
A race that looked like you might’ve had a chance to win was last week at Daytona, but an early crash with your teammate, Denny Hamlin, who also had a shot to win, ended that chance. It’s never good to crash, and even worse when that crash involves a teammate. What kind of an impact does that have on a race team?
“Denny and I can handle anything that happens on the race track with each other. We’re both professional drivers and can handle it. Everybody is good and we’re all focused on doing what we all do every week. We’re over that hurdle.”
After your accident at Daytona when you were back in the garage area, you had some harsh words for Denny Hamlin. How much of that was emotion and adrenaline talking?
“Most of it was just the disappointment of getting knocked out of the race knowing that we had two good cars. Here we are as a team running first and second and all of the sudden the first- and second-place cars are knocked out of the race. Something happens, you get right out of the car, and a camera is right in your face. You get that pure emotion. I’m the first one to open my mouth before I think about what I’m saying. I’m the king of doing that, as far as saying stuff that I wish I wouldn’t have said.
“We don’t get a cool off period like other sports do. We don’t have that luxury as race car drivers. But that’s a lot of what has drawn fans to NASCAR. They get that honest emotion right off the bat. When you do interviews right after something like that happens, you’re only seeing it from your side and where you were sitting versus where the other guy was sitting.”
You competed in a 360 winged sprint car in the Old Spice Summer Sizzler Tuesday night at your race track – Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. Is that kind of extra-curricular racing therapeutic after enduring the kind of weekend you had at Daytona?
“It was absolutely therapeutic for me to come and run at Eldora. Even though you’re still working hard, this type of racing takes a lot of the stress away. I look forward to this event and I had a lot of fun. I don’t know how relaxing it is. It’s still a lot of work, but it’s no stress, which makes it a lot of fun for me. I drive a car I’m not used to driving. It’s got a wing on it, which is an adjustment. I used to run the non-winged cars here a lot, but to run the winged car is a totally different experience. The winged cars are about two seconds quicker than the non-winged cars at Eldora, so it’s definitely different, which is what makes it fun.”
Despite having a limited amount of practice time at Chicagoland in 2004 and 2005, as you endured crashes in practice during both years, you’ve performed very well, as a win in 2004 and a fifth-place finish in 2005 indicate. Is Chicagoland a venue where you don’t need a lot of practice, or is it just a matter of the team being so prepared that it doesn’t matter whether you start the race with your primary or backup race car?
“You don’t necessarily need all the practice time, it’s just a matter of fine-tuning your car to get it driving the way you want it to there. I’d rather take a chance on not having a guarantee to win the race versus crashing and knowing I can win the race. It’s back to the cookie-cutter mile-and-a-halves, and the guys that are good on those mile-and-a-half tracks are good at Chicagoland because the package is pretty similar wherever you go.”
Chicagoland and its sister track in Kansas look exactly alike. Are they?
“They’re about as close as you can get to being the same. You aren’t going to find any two tracks that are more identical than Kansas and Chicago. The only difference between the two tracks – the backstretch at Chicago is a little bit rounded while Kansas’ is straight.”
Have the two tracks matured in the same way since they were both constructed at the same time?
“It’s been impressive to see how much the groove has matured, to where it’s moved up, giving us more racing room and more options. At some tracks it takes years for the groove to move up, but Kansas and Chicagoland have been very similar in the way the groove has moved up the race track. It’s made the racing better.”
Can you pretty much pass wherever you want at Chicagoland?
“I think you can pass anywhere, really. If you get a guy that misses the bottom of the corner and he bobbles, you can get around him. But even if someone doesn’t make a mistake and you’ve got a little better car than they do, the groove is so wide that you have plenty of room to get a run on a guy. But as the tires wear out and grip goes away, drivers will make mistakes and a car’s handling will become more important. And when a guy makes a mistake you need to be there to capitalize on it. You can really pass anywhere as long as the right opportunity comes up.”
Track position and pit strategy seem to be the two biggest variables at Chicagoland. When and how do you make the decision to sacrifice tires for track position, or depending on the circumstances, track position for tires?
“I think it just depends on how your car is working. If your car is driving well, one that keeps you up toward the front all day because it’s fast, then just two tires can keep you pretty quick. In that situation, you could make a big gain at the end by just taking on two tires and maintaining your track position. Even some guys who are behind and don’t have their car the way they want, by taking on two tires, the track position they gain helps out more than four tires would. But when you get right down to it, I think Chicago is a track where if your car’s good, then it doesn’t matter whether you take two tires or four.”
What percentages would you put on a comparison between the importance of horsepower and handling at Chicagoland?
“It’s probably about 50/50. You need to have an aerodynamic car, but you’ve got to have the horsepower to pull it, too. You can’t have one and not the other and expect to go to Chicago and win the race.”
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