Stewart Not in a Panic...
Senior Editor
He's dropped back to fifth in the Sprint Cup Series point standings but Tony Stewart is staying the course and looks for improvement in Sunday's Price Chopper 400 at Kansas Speedway.
Stewart led the regular season of the Sprint Cup schedule with ease but has hit a few speed bumps in the Chase as the playoff portion of the schedule heads for its third race Sunday in Kansas.
Stewart knows there's still lots of racing yet to determine the championship and understands much can happen from now until the Homestead finale.
"I don't have the answers," he said. "Nobody has the answers. All we can do is speculate on what’s going to happen until each week actually happens. So all we can do is guess on what's going to happen. If any of us can predict the top-10 positions in Sunday's race – you're a genius, let alone figuring out how the next eight weeks are going to be."
He comes into the weekend 106 points behind leader Mark Martin in the Chase standings but feels no sense of pressure to make up points at this point in the season.
"The season finale at Homestead," Stewart said. "You can ask me that question after we run Sunday, and the answer may be totally different. It's strictly a week-to-week deal. None of us can predict this. If we could, we'd be bookies in Las Vegas making millions of dollars betting on these races instead of driving in them. And it's a heck of a lot safer sitting in a chair in that dark room letting cocktail waitresses bring you drinks."
Stewart also acknowledges that winning a third title would be especially sweet given this is the first season he's served as both an owner and driver with the new Stewart-Haas Racing team.
"Every year, you want to win the championship, but the cool thing is this year we have the opportunity to do something that Alan Kulwicki was the last to do," Stewart said. "There's not a sense of urgency. It's not like after this year I'm not going to be an owner anymore, and this is our only shot.
"But I feel like, to a certain degree, what has happened so far this year has exceeded the expectations of many, and that everything from here on in is a bonus. I would be lying if I didn't say we realize we've got just as good a shot as anybody to win the championship, and we're going to work just as hard, if not harder, to accomplish that."
He thinks that hard work will pay dividends one way or another.
"But whatever we get out of that, we’ll take," Stewart said. "We feel that we've got two cars that if we can put together 10 good weeks, we've got as good a shot as anybody to win the championship."
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