Stewart still putting his foot down
INDIANAPOLIS — Tony Stewart is taking nothing for granted.
Sure, he’s been NASCAR’s hottest driver with three wins in the last four races. But he made sure to bring his cars to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Tuesday to test for next month’s Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.
Wins are rare, no matter how well the last race went, he said.
“If it were that easy, we wouldn’t have even come to testing,” Stewart said. “We would have just said ‘We’re where we need to be’ and took a couple days off. That’s why we’re here sweating our guts out today trying to figure out how to go fast.”
That hasn’t been a problem for Stewart’s team lately.
The star of the Joe Gibbs Racing team who grew up a little more than an hour from the Speedway in Columbus, Ind., is in third place in the Nextel Cup point standings heading into Sunday’s Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway.
“The last five weeks have been phenomenal for us,” Stewart said. “I keep thinking I’m in a dream and I’m going to wake up and have it not happen. The good thing is that it’s happening, and it’s happening at the right time of the season for us. The timing couldn’t be better.”
Stewart said there’s no fancy secret to his success.
“We’ve had some really good tests recently, and we’ve found some things that have been able to work at the tracks,” he said.
Stewart tested Tuesday with a top lap of 178.385 mph.
Bobby Hamilton led the final day of testing Tuesday with a lap of 183.905. It was the fastest lap overall over six days of testing the last three weeks at the 2 1/2 -mile oval. His son, Bobby Hamilton Jr., was second-fastest Tuesday at 182.576.
Stewart said he liked the Speedway’s surface, repaved last fall for the first time since 1995.
“There’s hardly a bump on the track,” he said. “It makes it fun for the drivers, and as teams, it makes it easier.”
Stewart hopes for better luck this year at the Brickyard. He finished fifth last year and has 19 career Nextel Cup wins, but none at Indianapolis, where he also has raced in the Indy 500 five times.
If he stays on track, he might continue his recent habit of scaling fences after victories.
“Let’s worry about getting to the checkered flag, then we’ll worry about the fence,” he said.