Canny Stewart chasing Daytona hat-trick.
Leading series star hopeful of extending winning record in Florida this weekend to write himself into history books once again.
NASCAR veteran Tony Stewart was admitted to an elite group last July when he scored his second consecutive win in the Pepsi 400 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race at Daytona International Speedway, and this weekend he is aiming to make it a victory hat-trick ? what would be his 30th Nextel success.
After leading a race-high 86 laps in last year's Pepsi 400 and all-but nine of the 160 laps in the 2005 edition to register his only two restrictor plate wins in the Nextel Cup, the 36-year-old joined David Pearson, Cale Yarborough and his racing idol A.J. Foyt as the sole drivers to triumph in back-to-back 400-mile races at Daytona. Only the former has managed it three times in succession.
The restrictor plate races at Daytona are always wild card ones,? Tony Stewart confessed. ?You never know who's going to win. We were fortunate enough to win two years ago and last year we were able to back it up. To do it back-to-back like that is something we're really proud of.
The Columbus native twice led the Daytona 500 at the same circuit earlier this year, and he acknowledged this had given him added reason for optimism ahead of his upcoming challenge, though he stressed the track was now a very different beast to what it had been back in February.
The car we're going to run in the 400 this time is the same car we won the shoot-out with,? he stated. ?It's already a proven winner at Daytona, so that does give me confidence. We feel our cars are better at Daytona in July than they actually are in February because the track is so much hotter and slicker.
It's probably five times more of a handling race track in July than it is in February because of the heat. Even though it might cool off a little bit at night, there's so much heat in the race track that it just stays there and soaks in the asphalt, but we seem to be able to find a balance that our car really likes so we have a lot of confidence we can go back and win again.
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