NASCAR Sprint Cup: Notes from a Teleconference with Tony Stewart

Tony Stewart seemed upbeat and positive at a syndicated teleconference held on October 24th.

Though his hopes at a third Sprint Cup championship have waned in the past few weeks, the former champ was nothing, if not optimistic.

One sure contributor to this cheery mood was his official affirmation that Kraft had re-upped with him as a sponsor. It will not be his primary sponsor, but tough economic times such as these force teams to take whatever they can get as funding and be thankful for it.         

Stewart was asked by a fan via Twitter, before the official round of questioning began, what he would be doing if not driving in the Sprint Cup. His reply was simply that he would still be racing, no matter what, but would revert back to Sprint cars in the World of Outlaws series.     

He is not overly concerned about the Martinsville race this weekend. When asked about the complete change from the Talladega behemoth to the tiny confines of the short track in only a week, he replied:

"It's just a switch . . . we still have got in street cars when we got out of the airport and drove ourselves home and that's a different deal than driving at Talladega, too. A week in between, you start practice on Friday and you remember where you're at and what you did at Talladega really doesn't (matter)—you don't think about the driving style differences. When you pull in there you realize that you are at a lot different place and you settle in really quickly and the mode of back to what you have to do to be fast at Martinsville."

Stewart also took the blame for his performance at Talladega and his inability to work with teammate/employee Ryan Newman. He squelched any rumour of division between them.

He noted:

"Obviously Ryan didn't do anything wrong . . . I got out of sequence with him and got moving around on the rear bumper trying to get caught back up to him. It just happened that when we caught the double zero car  (David Reutimann), that I was coming back to the right, and you know, it got Ryan turned sideways . . . I have to take 100 percent of the blame there. Ryan was doing a great job and I was very comfortable running with him."

Asked about his chances at the championship, he gave his standard reply: He is taking it one day at a time.

He handled a somewhat puzzling question quite well and did not give the reporter some of the venom that he has wielded with the media in days past.

The question posed was, "Are you at all surprised that there's two Fords at the top of the standings right now?"

He could have scorged the randomness of this question, but he deflected it well. "No, not at all. There were, in my opinion, eight guys that started the Chase that could be in those first two spots right there, and Matt and Carl were obviously two of the guys that I had on that top eight list. So does it surprise me? No."

A fair follow-up question to this could have been "Who are the four that could not have been in the first two spots?" That question was left unasked.

One reporter pointed out that Stewart was the only driver to ever win championships in both the old  format and the Chase format. The question posed was whether there was a huge difference between the two.

Stewart's view on this was basically that the Chase format is much more stressful because of the constriction down to only 10 races for the title.

After a few more questions about the new fuel injection system that NASCAR will implement next year and the possibilities of having two Formula One races in the United States, the teleconference concluded.

Go get 'em, Smoke!