Tony Stewart Racing - A Fans View

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TONY STEWART:
TALK ABOUT YOUR WIN AND YOUR FEELINGS RIGHT NOW
“I’m actually more overjoyed than anything. I’m just finally glad that we’ve got the monkey off our backs at least for one week. This should have been the fourth or fifth time we’ve been sitting in this (media center) room with you guys after the race is over. But whether it’s been fuel mileage or just bad luck, we just haven’t been able to close one off. So today was a very textbook day in all reality for us. We started 19th and we worked our way into the top 10 and then we got a caution and Zippy and I had talked about what had happened in the Busch race yesterday and just really got on the same page today as far as some ideas that we wanted to do; not that we don’t normally do that, but we both had seen the same things from yesterday’s race. New tires weren’t as important as having track position so we just needed that at the beginning of the race. We were a little too tight. Zippy made a change and the car really was good the rest of the day from there on. There were just little things that he did to fine-tune it. Once we got in the top three, I felt like in my head that we had a shot at winning the race. I knew that with Kevin (Harvick) in front of us and we started running him down. And Jimmie and some of the guys that had been leading the race and were in the top two or three, really weren’t making time on us and we were on older tires than they were. So, it makes you feel good as a driver when you see the guys aren’t running you down from behind and you’re running the guy down in front of you. Today, the difference was pit stops. The guys had awesome pit stops and got us track position when we needed it; especially that last stop. Being able to stay ahead of everybody and have that clean air on restarts. Matt (Kenseth) was really good on restarts on cooler tires. It seemed like we were really a little bit too free for a short stint and a short run, but that’s what we kept getting with the cautions coming out. But we just needed a long ru n. Our car was a lot better after about eight or 10 laps. The short runs there really hurt us and gave Matt the opportunity to close in and cool his tires off and make a run at us. But it seemed like once we would get about six or seven laps on the tires the car would start coming into it balance-wise and we could start driving away.”

WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHT FROM ON TOP OF THE BOX?
ZIPPY: “Obviously for myself and my team, it came at the right time. We get a weekend off and we can enjoy it a little more than you normally do. It’s leading up to a couple of good race tracks for us with Indy and Pocono and Watkins Glen coming, we’ll take this momentum and head to the second half of the season. I’m proud of everybody back at the shop. This is a brand new car that we didn’t even test. I’ve been wearing them out on building us new cars for the last half of the year and they’ve done a good job of answering to it. They’ve put two or three bodies on this thing and they haven’t stopped. They’ve done a lot of work that people don’t realize that goes on back home and the preparation and effort that goes on before we even get here. Our motor room with this new RO7 has done a great job and haven’t missed a beat. Knock on wood, we haven’t had any issues. So I’m proud of everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing for today. It was a team effort. Our pit stops were awesome. Tony did a phenomenal job getting off pit road through traffic and these are the days that you like to have. You just go out and work on the car and have fun. It kind of was a little bit, I don’t want to say relaxing, but it wasn’t the first 18 races we’ve had with something going wrong. Everything worked for us today and everybody kept their heads high most of the season and that’s what I think finally broke the ice for us.”

WERE YOU REALLY FEELING AS CALM ABOUT NOT WINNING YET THIS YEAR AS YOU SHOWED?
STEWART: “From my side, I really felt that way. It’s like I tried to explain to you guys, and you guys make more out of it and make us more stressed out than we do about ourselves. We take it one week at a time. You guys are the ones with the stats. From my standpoint, when I’ve got a car every week that I know at least I’ll have the capability of running up front with, you know that you can’t have bad luck forever. And there have been times when we’ve had strings when we couldn’t do anything wrong and had all the luck go our way. It just goes in cycles. If it was a situation where we couldn’t run up front and there were two or three teams that had stuff figured out and we couldn’t compete with them and we were running 20th or 30th every week and couldn’t figure out what to do to get in the top five again, then you would be worried about not winning races. But when you lead 250 of 280 laps at Bristol and you gain 15 seconds on the leaders at Sonoma, and you’re the fastest car on the race track at the end of the race at Charlotte but you don’t win because of fuel mileage; it’s those things that carry you to the next week. You say hey, we’re not doing a bad job. We just need a little luck to go our way. So from my standpoint, I firmly believe what I’ve told you guys. I haven’t been freaking out about it. I’ve been happy that we’ve been in the position that whether it was the car of tomorrow or there was the car we had this weekend but everywhere we’ve been, we seem to be competitive. We have been better at some of the tracks we struggled at this year than we have in the past. Plus, the tracks have been good at, we’ve maintained our competitiveness. So I’ve really felt good about the season even though the win column doesn’t show it.”

COULD YOU SEE THAT TONY WAS HURTING MORE THAN HE WAS LETTING ON?
ZIPPY: “I have to agree with Tony. When you hear it every week, how come you haven’t won? We haven’t done a lot of things differently than we have in the past. Today was our day and it took 19 races for us to get there. But I think everybody is doing a good job. Our pit crew has improved. Fuel mileage has hurt us in a few places and we’re working hard on that. The problem is, when you run as fast as we have at some of these places, your fuel mileage hurts. And you’ve got to be careful what you wish for.

“But we’ve had good race cars and he’s driving the hang out of them. That’s put us in some predicaments that we could have won. So to me, it’s really not that big a deal. We always seem to win; we’re winning at the right time right now as far as here and carrying it to the second part, the monkey’s off our back so it’s just another day really.”

DOES THE CHASE FORMAT NOW MAKE IT LESS IMPORTANT IF YOU HAVE A FEW BAD RACES AT THE START OF THE YEAR SO LONG AS YOU WIN AT THE RIGHT TIME?
STEWART: “Yeah, you guys (media) are really good on stats and figures. The first 26 (races) are really relevant except for how many wins you’ve got. That’s the only thing that those first 26 weeks count for and that’s getting you the bonus points. Other than that, as long as you’re in the top 12, it doesn’t matter whether you’re first or 12th. As long as you’re in there, that’s what it takes to get you in the show. And then you need to be good from there. But it’s not a life or death situation if you have a bad day as long as after 26 races you’re in that top 12 group. If you have one bad race and it puts you 15 points out like it did us last year, then it is bad. It just depends on each individual team’s scenario. But we’re not sending the space shuttle to outer space with this format. It’s pretty easy to figure out. Twelve guys get in and they have the same amount of points and the guy that won the most races gets 10 extra bonus points for every race you win. It’s easy to do the math. It’s easy for everybody to follow.”

THIS PUTS YOU ON A NICE ROAD GOING TO INDY. ARE YOU GLAD TO HAVE A WEEK OFF?
STEWART: “You have no idea how glad I am to have a week off. I’m taking this momentum on vacation. And I’ve got a case of Schlitz that I fully intend on getting to the bottom of the cardboard box tonight, even if I have to do it by myself. I don’t care. It’s going to happen. That’s if I don’t pass out first (laughter). You guys laugh at me like nobody drinks Schlitz anymore. The good thing is they stock it close to home and it’s only about eight bucks a case, cold. And if you’ve got a couple of roommates and you’ve got seven in the fridge when you leave, you’ve got seven in the fridge. You’re not supporting everybody else’s drinking habits. Mike Arning, my publicist, taught me how to drink responsibly. Thank you, Mike.”

COULD YOU TALK ABOUT THE SIDE-BY-SIDE DUEL WITH MATT KENSETH; AND WITH CLEAN AIR, COULD HE HAVE DONE THE SAME THING TO YOU THAT YOU DID TO HIM AT THE END?
STEWART: “Yeah, he could have. Very easily. The thing that I noticed watching Matt was the two times that Jimmie (Johnson) and I were first and second, Matt was able to stay with us for six or eight laps and then it seemed like his car would fall off a little bit and I’m sure a lot of that was air.

“But as long as I didn’t give him the outside, I think I was in good shape. Jimmie got by us and ran us down on the top and then after he went by, I moved up. I didn’t move up as far as he did but I moved up to the middle of the track and found a spot that I really liked and we got faster and got back by. As long as we had that line available to us, we were fine. I ran the bottom to more try to disturb the air on his car because I knew he could stay down so we could stay down too, but the longer we stayed in front of him, the harder it was going to make it for him to have clean air and keep a run on us. It very easily could have been a different outcome if he cleared us on that first restart.”

ON YOUR RECORD AT CHICAGOLAND YOU HAVE RUN EVEN WITH JEFF GORDON IN JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING BUT LAPS LED. HOW COMFORTABLE ARE YOU ON THIS TRACK AND HOW MUCH DID YOU DISCUSSION WITH J.D. GIBBS AFFECT YOUR WIN TODAY?
STEWART: “I think we’ve always been good here. You look at the past and we’ve had some weird events. On Friday’s we’ve had two events where we’ve crashed in practice. The first time Hermie Sadler blew a motor and before the caution came out we crashed in his oil and went to the hospital and I think we missed a day that day. And then a couple of years ago we blew a tire in practice and JJ (Yeley) had to qualify for us. It’s one of those places where as long as we get through Friday, we feel like we’ve got a shot at it. But I don’t watch the stats very much. You just take it week to week. Technology in the sport changes so fast. What was good the last time you were here doesn’t mean it’s going to be good this time around. So you constantly have to work. It’s like Greg said where you bring a brand new car that we haven’t even ran here, and win with it, so it’s just proof that you’ve got to keep pushing the envelope. It’s a place I like. This place is really getting racy as far a s finally being able to move around and change lines and run anywhere from the bottom to the top so it makes it a fun track because of that.”

WERE YOU SURPRISED THAT JOE GIBBS FELT IT NECESSARY TO COME OUT HERE YESTERDAY AND WHAT WAS THAT MEETING LIKE?
STEWART: “It was a good meeting. And the good part was that it was fairly short because Joe can get long-winded sometimes. Joe Gibbs’ strength is that he knows how to motivate people and how to keep a team atmosphere and attitude. It was a great meeting. The good thing is Denny (Hamlin) and I talked and we had a great conversation. Even today, if you really watch the two of us when we were around each other at the beginning of the race (at Daytona) we were even pointing on the race track to each other trying to help each other find spots we think are going to help each other. When I went to the top and got by him I pointed over the roof like, come up here and try this because he’s actually better at running the top than I am. He got back down to the bottom and pointed me back down there saying I think this is going to be better. So, we worked probably better today than we’ve ever worked as teammates. And Denny is a young guy. And as far as teammates, we’re only a year and a half into our relationship and out of a half-hour meeting yesterday, it’s probably going to make us stronger than ever and today was a good example of that. We worked really well together and will continue to do that.”

DID YOU END UP GOING TO ELDORA LAST NIGHT?
STEWART: “Yes. Kasey Kahne and myself both did. We got back at about 12:30 a.m.

DO YOU GET A CHANCE TO CLEAR YOUR HEAD AFTER SOMETHING LIKE THAT?
STEWART: “No, it gives you a chance to work on your ulcer. When you’ve got a race team that you own there and you’ve got a big event like the King’s Royal and you’ve got a corporate sponsor like Crown Royal there, you want to make sure that everything goes right. We probably had close to 18,000-20,000 fans there last night that want to see a good race. It’s hard to keep a dirt track prepared nice and it’s almost impossible to not have dust anymore. For winged Sprint Cars they want it dry and slick and anytime it gets dry you get dust. It’s hard to keep the track prepared the way they want it and not let it get locked down with rubber and make it a one-groove race track. As a promoter last night, I’m worried to death because I want every one of those fans there to see a good race and you want Crown Royal to be happy and you want the competitors to be happy. I wouldn’t say anything about last night was relaxing. It was stressful but I choose to do that because I love - even with the ulcers it gives you, it’s well worth the time spent to know that you make that many people happy.”

ON MACON SPEEDWAY:
STEWART: “If you guys don’t know, I’ll be at Macon Friday night so that’s part of my vacation. I don’t even know what I’m driving yet. Schrader says I’m running a late model. Kenny Wallace says I’m running a modified and I thought I was running a midget. So I don’t know what I’m driving there yet but we’ll figure it out when we get there, I guess.”

HOW DO YOU THINK THE TRACK HERE HAS MATURED OVER THE YEARS?
STEWART: “Both here and Kansas City - I call them sister tracks because with the exception of the bow in the backstretch here, they’re identical race tracks for the most part - both of them, it seems like the last couple years in particular, have come around. They’ve seasoned and it’s got to where we finally got off the bottom and move around the race track more. That’s what you want as a driver, that’s what teams want. You don’t want to be stuck following guys and not being able to move around and pass. Early in the Busch race yesterday it moved up and that made me happy knowing. and half the time the Cup cars are going to get up there. You look on lap four or five and I thought I saw Dale Jr. about six inches from the top of the wall and I thought ‘the good thing is it’s moved all the way up already because he’s there’. So he’s a pretty good benchmark of knowing when the track is ready to move up. It just makes you confident that at least you’ve got options when you go in the corner of where you can go when you can help yourself out as a driver, kind of like what we talk about at Michigan about being able to move around. It makes this place a lot more fun when you’re able to move around like it is. So the first couple of times that we came here we all dreaded it because it was just single-file racing and all you heard us talk about was aero push. Now you can’t really use the aero push excuse too much anymore because you have the ability to move around on the race track more.”

DO YOU THINK THE NEW CAR WILL BE CONDUCIVE TO PASS AT ANY POINT IN THE RACE ON A TRACK LIKE THIS?
STEWART: “Well, it hasn’t been that way so far, really. But it’s a new car for everybody too. We’ve been working with this style of car for. the teams have been working with it before I even got here. It’s evolved over time. With the new car, it’s a new formula. Finding the right equation to what it wants and what makes the car happy is the hard thing for Greg and the rest of the guys at the shop. In time I’m sure it will get that way but I think we’ve all got to keep in mind how technology moves and what we’re dealing with here. We’re dealing with a brand-new car that’s going to run half the season this year and I’m not sure right away we can all have the expectations that it’s going to solve the world’s problems as far as racing is concerned right off the bat. But it will get there, I believe.”

ZIPPY: “It’s definitely taken a lot of things to make that car work but I don’t know that the outcome has been drastically different. It will be interesting when we start testing these things at the mile-and-a-half and two-mile places to see what it brings. I think that if it doesn’t work, they’ll probably make changes with it and try to make it better.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT GOING TO INDIANAPOLIS:
ZIPPY: “It doesn’t matter where we go as long as we get the weekend off. It’s just another race track. It pays the same amount of points. We’re going there to win like we do every week. We’re not going to work any harder, we’re not going to work any less. We’re going to prepare like we do, bring our best stuff there and hopefully we’ll win there for a second time.”

WHAT DO YOU FEEL THE PERFECT CUP SCHEDULE WOULD BE?
STEWART: “I don’t know. I think it’s bigger and further than what I can grasp. As a promoter I can understand why we go to the places we go and the markets and the value of that to our sport but it depends on which angle you look at it from. If you look at it from a crew and team angle, if you look at it from a driver’s angle, if you look at it from a sanctioning body’s angle you’re going to get three different answers there. And rightfully so. There’s reasons that NASCAR has the schedule the way it is. There’s reasons that drivers and teams want it cut back but NASCAR hasn’t got here by making bad decisions and hasn’t built the sport to where it is by making bad decisions.”
J.D. GIBBS, PRESIDENT OF JOE GIBBS RACING

ON THE EVENTS OF THE WEEK:
“Obviously it was a tough week. You had two great cars last week and getting a break and going through all the stuff we went through this week, and then dad (Joe Gibbs) made a guest appearance yesterday so I said ‘hey, I told them before, I just work here. You own the thing so come back every Saturday if you want to, if that’s what it takes.’ He said that he’s got his full-time job kicking off here in a couple of weeks so it was good wrap-up to a tough week.”

TO GET A WIN, IS IT AS SIMPLE AS HAVING JOE GIBBS COME TO THE TRACK TO CALM THINGS DOWN?
“Ask him, he’ll tell you that (laughs). I think the reality. I looked up at the board halfway through and I think it said we led in 13 of 18 races so I look at that and think ‘oh my gosh, last season it was 14 of 19′. So I think the reality of it is, we’ve had good cars week in and week out. If you do that long enough, you’re bound to hit your stride. As always, we kind of hit our stride, for some reason, summertime on. So that’s fine. If that’s the case we’ll take that and be strong at the end of the year.”

TONY SEEMS TO BE HIS BEST WHEN THERE’S THE MOST CHAOS AROUND. DO YOU THINK THAT’S TRUE?
“There’s something to be said for that. When you kind of look back. of course, with Tony there’s always a lot of chaos going on. So you can take your pick. I think for him, he’s passionate about what he does. From day one he’s always told you what he’s thinking. At times, I think what he’s learned - he has matured over the years - to pick certain battles to fight. Certain battles aren’t worth fighting and certain ones are. For him, I think this one. you know, last week our issue was he said some stuff after the race. Those guys had a chance to get together yesterday. I think he does. Tony’s used to, since he was a kid. he’s had some big stuff going on all his life. So I think it’s probably no different but the reality of it is even when that stuff wasn’t happening, we had good race cars and should have won a bunch of races, we just didn’t. That’s part of life, really.”

IF THE WASHINGTON REDSKINS DON’T GET OFF TO A GOOD START, DOES TONY HAVE TO GO GIVE THEM A PEP TALK?
“I did tell my dad - we won five of 11 games last year - I said, ‘if we win five of 11 this year you will be back full-time’ (laughs).
Tony made a few appearances up there and it’s kind of neat to watch those guys interact. But I’m not sure if my dad’s going to have him give any pep talks up there any time soon.”

IS THIS A GOOD YEAR FOR TONY TO CATCH UP BEFORE THE CHASE?
“Looking at the points, we felt pretty good last week. We didn’t feel like we had a huge cushion in the top 12 so it’s kind of nice to get this under your belt and really have a chance here to really tune and get prepared for those last 10 races. That’s kind of the mode we’re in right now. Let’s get all the wins we can get and spend this time tuning for those last 10.”

IS YOUR DAD PRETTY TOUGH WHEN HE TALKS TO THE DRIVERS AND DID HE ASK FOR YOUR PERMISSION TO DO SO?
“I couldn’t make it out yesterday and I think he realized. he was on his way out for a West Coast trip so for him to be able to stop and spend some time. he’s obviously very passionate about it as well. What most people don’t realize, when you get my dad in the NFL and football, he’s almost always serious. Crazy intense. Over here, you kind of see him laid back, hanging out. But I think he was a little more intense yesterday than he normally is in the racing world. His personality, which I love about our team, if there’s a problem he’ll deal with it quickly and move on. We learned some hard lessons years ago and that’s the best way to deal with it. Hopefully we can move on past that.”

AFTER ALL THE HENDRICK DOMINANCE EARLY IN THE YEAR, DO YOU THINK THINGS ARE EVENING OUT NOW?
“They were pretty good today. I do think, if you look back over the last 10 years is there’s always a little cycle. There’s kind of a wave and we’ve kind of been through it. We had a chance to win through the last seven championships. I think Rick (Hendrick) is going to win a couple, Jack (Roush) has won a couple. There’s just kind of a wave that comes and goes but I think the guys are on top of their game more consistently throughout a year and be dominant. That’s kind of our goal. We might not be winning everything but you know your cars are good, your guys are good and that gives you kind of peace there.”

HOW FRUSTRATED DO YOU THINK TONY WAS AFTER LAST WEEKEND?
“I don’t really know if he was crazy frustrated. I think crazy frustrated would have been when you’re running in mid-pack and you don’t have a chance to win. That’s when you get really frustrated. I think we’ve been through these issues before and I think he obviously wants to win. I think for him, the points thing is what it is but he wants to win. That’s what he lives off of because that’s what he grew up with. I think it did bother him some. I don’t think that led to him saying some of the stuff he did last Saturday night.”

HOW MUCH PEACE OF MIND CAN THIS GIVE TONY?
“I don’t know. I would hope that it makes him feel good about. we all know he’s a phenomenal race car driver. Unless he’s winning consistently, he’s going to be frustrated. I think the same is with Zippy and Denny and Mike Ford, even with J.J. and Steve Addington. All those guys are used to winning. If they don’t win they’re going to be frustrated. I don’t think there’s any undercurrent or any kind of hidden message in all of this, I think it was just about time he won. He’s run well long enough and you’re going to have your shots.”

WHY WAS THE SITUATION BETWEEN TONY AND DENNY HANDLED HERE IN FRONT OF EVERYONE AND NOT IN THE SHOP LAST WEEK?
We haven’t been in this sport that long. We’ve been here 16 years and it used to be if there was a problem 10 or 12 years ago, everyone was right there. Everyone was in Charlotte. You grab them and you sit down and deal with it. The reality of it now is Tony is going places, Denny is going places, we’re going places. So the reality of it was, to sit down face to face, which is what we felt like we needed to do, the first opportunity to do that was here. So we addressed it with Tony and Denny during the week and the understanding was that when you come here, we’re going to sit down and have a conversation and move on.”

Eldora Speedway, Greg Zipadelli, Joe Gibbs Racing, Nextel Cup, Tony Stewart