Last year’s Kansas race was wild ride for Stewart
Tony Stewart got into quite the little fracas at Kansas Speedway on Nextel Cup weekend last year.
Not with fans, media or another driver. Not this time.
Tony Stewart’s spat was with crew chief, strategist and race-day psychologist Greg Zipadelli.
Zipadelli wound up prevailing in their disagreement — and as a result, Tony Stewart wound up winning the race. Barely.
Last year’s race was memorable for being chaotic. There were 11 cautions, which ate up 45 laps of racing. Then, there was the end. That’s when chaotic turned to bizarre.
The final laps turned out to be a battle between drivers and their fuel supplies as several teams, including Tony Stewart’s, gambled that they would not need a late-race pit stop to top off.
That set the stage for Tony Stewart vs. Zipadelli.
In one corner, Tony Stewart was lobbying to go. In the other, “Zippy” was lobbying to slow.
“It was a battle between the driver and the crew chief,” Tony Stewart recalled this week. “The crew chief is yelling at you every lap to save fuel, but you’re not slowing down enough and he knows it because he’s looking at the stopwatch.”
Slowing down is not part of the genetic makeup of many drivers. It is certainly seldom part of a Tony Stewart game plan.
“When you’ve got guys behind you, you know you don’t want to give those spots up in case they happen to make it on fuel,” Tony Stewart said. “So I tried to save as much fuel as I could and still hold guys off.”
It appeared that all would end well as the final laps clicked away.
But on the final lap, the plan appeared to be in jeopardy. Tony Stewart’s car began to sputter. And then it went silent as the fuel supply went dry.
Tony Stewart remembers the details.
“When we were coming down the backstretch,” he said, “I asked how many laps we had left and they said, ‘You’re coming to the white (flag).’ Then I saw the needle (on the fuel gauge) start bouncing and it wasn’t on zero, but it was down to three pounds and bouncing up and down.
“We came down the frontstretch, and it started losing pressure when we went into turn one. Then it caught up for a second, but as soon as we came off turn two, it lost pressure immediately. It’s just important to get it kicked out of gear right away and just get down low on the racetrack and take the shortest distance around. We just coasted around and hoped we had enough of a lead to stay out front. Turned out, we did.”
They did because Casey Mears, who also gambled on fuel mileage and was second behind Tony Stewart on the track, also ran out of fuel and had to coast home.
Tony Stewart was not part of last year’s Chase for the Nextel Cup Championship. That was horrible for him and his team’s 2006 season, but it was good for his Sunday afternoon at Kansas Speedway.
“We were able to take the chance because we had nothing to lose,” Tony Stewart said. “Not being in the Chase gave us that opportunity to take the chance and go ahead and run for it. It’s not a chance we can take this year.”
