Editors Note: FanHouse is teaming up with two-time NASCAR champion Tony Stewart for weekly, in-depth stories as he competes in the 10-week Chase for the Sprint Cup. Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Old Spice Chevrolet, enters Saturday night's race at Charlotte Motor Speedway -- the fifth of the 10 playoff races -- ranked fifth in the standings, 107 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson. On Friday, FanHouse caught up with Stewart in his motor coach just before the start of final practice. Here's his personal account of a busy week starting with his second victory of the season Sunday in Fontana, Calif., followed by a major press conference Tuesday when he announced that Mobil 1 will be a primary sponsor of his car for 11 races in 2011. CONCORD, N.C. -- We didn't get in a big hurry to leave (Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif). Probably the coolest part was I thanked all the guys and came back to the motor coach and (co-owner) Gene's (Haas) motor home was parked right next to mine.
Gene and his family were still outside and they had their own personal cameras out and they were taking pictures of the scoring pylon and it had 200 laps at the top and the running order under it.
That's the stuff that makes you feel good. I've never seen Gene have a camera in his hand, let alone his entire family. That just shows you how big a moment it was for him personally. And for me, that was the icing on the cake. That's what meant the most to me.
When we won the All-Star race (in 2009) that was big, but to win in California, his home track with all his family there, the home of his business. ... to get a win there for him was big.
What a lot of people didn't know is that our World of Outlaw team the night before my California win ran first and second, my USAC Silver Crown team ran first and second and this week, It was just a huge week all the way around.
As far as celebrating, it wasn't really a big celebration except for on the plane. It was just myself, Eddie (business manager Eddie Jarvis), my dad (Nelson Stewart), (crew chief) Darian (Grubb), (car chief) Jeff Meendering and the pilots.
We had four hours to get home. Eddie was on his Ipad, Darian was on his computer and we had "Smokey and the Bandit" playing on all the TVs. We had it all old school then we were all listening to music.
On Monday, I did absolutely nothing. I laid on the boat all day and just relaxed. We had such a busy week in California, I just kinda took Monday (off).
"We had four hours to get home. Eddie was on his Ipad, Darian was on his computer and we had "Smokey and the Bandit" playing on all the TVs. We had it all old school then we were all listening to music."
-- Tony Stewart
Honestly, the media stuff wasn't that much different than usual. We loaded up Tuesday pretty heavily to maintain some sanity on Monday.
Tuesday, we went to the shop and started with a team meeting and introduced the Mobil 1 people to the organization then went out for the announcement and had four hours of media after that.
It's been weeks, it's not been months, that we had a deal (Mobil 1). It's not that it was necessarily a secret but just when you make the announcement you want them to get all the bang they can get out of it, to do it right and make it big.
I was there at the shop until 5 o'clock and then drove to the Brickhouse (restaurant) for the Jail and Bail (NASCAR scholarship fundraiser). My bail was set at $20,000 and we raised $25,000 so it was a good night there too.
We've been good in the Chase. You want them talking about you. We just had a bad race in Dover and I multiplied the problem with a speeding penalty and running out of fuel at Loudon, N.H. We dug ourselves a hole the first two weeks and the following two weeks dug ourselves out quite a bit.
Some of those guys have had problems and that helped us. That's what had to happen to get us the rest of the way there. Jimmie (Johnson), Denny (Hamlin) and Jeff (Gordon) are going to have to have at least that one off-day to get us the rest of the way there.
The good thing for us, is we're not having to be those guys looking at what's coming from behind. We're strictly focused on what's ahead of us. I told the guys at the team meeting on Tuesday that I'd rather fall all the way back to 10th doing everything we can to win than to say, 'This is good enough, let's try to keep what we've got.'
I'd rather and I think, our organization would rather go for it and go down in a big ball of fire trying then saying, 'That's good enough.'
No comments:
Post a Comment