LDN - Sports

Stewart needs miracle to advance in Chase

[September 30, 2016] By Jonathan Ingram, The Sports Xchange

If a retiring champion can be granted more than one miracle during his last hurrah, Tony Stewart has a chance to advance in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

Stewart, who will retire from full-time competition at the end of the season, is 15th in the standings going into the race at Dover, Del. on Sunday and is in danger of being eliminated after the opening Round of 16.

At Sonoma Raceway this summer, Stewart got the victory he needed to qualify for the Chase with a fortuitous final pit stop shortly before a caution fell, which put him in the lead. It may take similar good fortune for him to advance to the Round of 12 after Dover.

Just a run-of-the-mill win won't be enough.

He not only needs to finish ahead of the other three drivers below the cutline.

Stewart will also have to gain points on at least one of the 10 drivers above the cutline who are not yet locked in, which will likely require one of them to crash and retire early or suffer the sort of freakish mechanical misfortune that eliminated Jimmie Johnson last year.

Stewart can automatically advance if he wins at Dover, where he has three career victories. But that might require divine intervention given his performance with this year's low downforce package on ovals. An anticipated summer charge on flat, slick tracks in hot weather - where Stewart has traditionally been strong -- didn't materialize after the Sonoma victory in June.

It wasn't a strong recommendation that he finished 23rd at the relatively flat New Hampshire Motor Speedway last Sunday on a warm day. Stewart looked more like the Indy car driver he once was, one who won an IRL championship while relying on wings and high downforce.

In what was less than championship behavior, Stewart made himself scarce after the New Hampshire race. Midway in the race, he told his crew by radio that something was wrong with the car and that it suddenly went "numb." The crew didn't find anything when checking underneath the car on the next pit stop. Where several teams advanced in the late stages by putting on four tires during the spate of cautions at the end of the race, Stewart failed to advance. Now his season looks to be going numb.

Last year, four-time champion Jeff Gordon needed a miracle to advance to the championship finale at the Homestead-Miami Speedway before retiring from full-time participation in the Sprint Cup. He got one.

Matt Kenseth intentionally wrecked leader Joey Logano at the Martinsville Speedway late in the race, which enabled Gordon, running a distant second, to win and advance.

Gordon, who will race at Dover as a substitute for the concussed and sidelined Dale Earnhardt, Jr., had a much different swan song season than Stewart. Gordon was booed early in his career for breaking the good ol' mold of NASCAR drivers by favoring video games and running shoes over hunting, fishing and cowboy boots. But he eventually became a fan favorite due to an even-keeled personality and was recognized for having helped NASCAR grow by bringing in younger fans and female fans by the legions.

Three-time champion Stewart, by contrast, has been booed occasionally and still gets reamed in the online comments section.

The specter of a wrongful death civil suit over the incident on a New York short track where a young driver high on marijuana stepped in front of his car on a dark track remains, especially for the vast anti-Stewart segment of Sprint Cup fans.

At least Stewart's had an eventful season that has re-focused him on his stock car career. First, Stewart advanced his retirement plans by joining several fellow retired racing drivers in an off-road excursion during the winter and suffered a burst fracture in his back while on an ATV.

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Even before returning, Stewart stirred up a hornets' nest by declaring NASCAR's lug nut rules unsafe. He was fined $35,000 for popping off, but NASCAR agreed the safety was out of whack and changed its rules.

Then came the Sonoma victory, which included a brilliant closing stint to beat Denny Hamlin, who suffered sheet metal damage in the process. Alas, the last race in the regular season also saw Stewart trade sheet metal with Ryan Newman in a fit of pique that wrecked quite a few other team owners' cars. This was the Tony Stewart that fans love or loathe. And to think, he and Newman considered themselves friends.

As a team co-owner, Stewart also continues to stir the drink.

His drivers Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch, have been two of the most consistent on the circuit and have won four races between them. By winning at New Hampshire, Harvick has automatically advanced to the Round of 12. Busch, meanwhile, is 26 points ahead of Stewart and two positions above the cutline in 11th place. Only Danica Patrick has been a disappointment behind the wheel of an SHR Chevy.

Stewart and co-owner Gene Haas are already winners in 2017, having been awarded factory team status by Ford, which means a great leap forward in technical support. The team will no longer rely on Hendrick Motorsports to build its chassis and instead will develop its own technology in-house from the ground up, a process already under way this very successful last season with Chevy.

Which Tony will show up at Dover?

The one who sulks and walks away from a poor race with no comment - or the extraordinary wheelman who has made political incorrectness popular long before Donald Trump's current campaign - but with occasional bouts of real grace and humor?

Harvick suggests that you should never count Stewart out.

"Everybody bet against Tony to even make the Chase," said Harvick. "I think you look at Dover, it's a race track that - he can go to any race track and win."

Harvick has pounded on the door of victory lane all season and been admitted three times. Stewart needed a break to get into the lead at Sonoma, a road course where the lower downforce package is less a problem than on ovals due to the different corner entries required for left and right turns. On the ovals, he hasn't performed nearly as well or consistently as Harvick and Busch, who has one victory.

The good news is that Stewart will continue in the sport and very likely be involved in more championships and certainly more victories. He may even have a few more run-ins with NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France when he speaks his mind instead of following the unwritten rules of the new Charter system. Stewart-Haas Racing will undoubtedly heat up the Ford versus Chevrolet wars and maybe even cool off the dominance of the Toyotas.

But will he advance past Dover and crash the Chase? Even if a driver above the cutline hits some dire straits, Stewart will have to raise his game on a high-banked mile oval while finessing speed out of the current low downforce package.

Those are long odds, but not the kind that have ever intimidated Stewart.

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