Leonard Bernstein said the way to listen to Beethoven is to count on a surprise at every turn–and yet be unavoidably surprised by every turn. That is also true of watching Tony Stewart.
A week ago I walked away from Stewart’s motor coach thinking I finally had this, the most versatile and talented driver in the world today, figured out.
Sunday night I left Daytona International Speedway thinking I wasn’t even close.
But this week Bernstein’s observation came to mind.
From those who tolerated Beethoven through some music-appreciation class, to those of us who consider him the greatest composer of all time, we all know this:
You must listen to Beethoven with your fingers alert at the controls of your iPod. One moment he whispers so faintly you hardly can make it out. Then without warning he explodes in your eardrums.
Throughout most of Speedweeks at Daytona, Stewart pleaded for the lives of all the drivers, including himself. In his trademark whispering tone, he feared that “we’re going to kill somebody . . . “
NASCAR heard. Dangerous bump-drafting in the turns was forbidden, and that was enforced strictly.
Then at the crescendo, in the Daytona 500 itself, Stewart’s own rage compelled him to wreck Matt Kenseth–a move beside which all other rough driving combined in Speedweeks paled.
Kenseth articulated the huge size of the paradox.
“Tony’s worried about people’s lives, and now he’s going to wreck you on purpose at 190,” he said.
“He has no room to complain,” Stewart responded, alluding to an earlier incident where he believed Kenseth had wronged him. “He started the whole thing, and I finished it.”
The tradition of payback runs deep in American racing, down to the heartland dirt tracks of which Stewart is currently the most famous product. From such bullrings too came the all-time maestro of aggressive driving, Dale Earnhardt, and the all-time adherent to the jungle law of payback, Bobby Allison.
But not even they broke the singular taboo of NASCAR payback: taking someone out intentionally on the two biggest, deadliest tracks on the tour, Daytona and Talladega.
Allison sometimes seemed to prefer revenge even to winning. But the prize of the Daytona 500 always overrode that explosive pride. He won the race three times.
Stewart, in addition to sending a friend on a hair-raising slide through the infield and up into the path of onrushing traffic in the third turn, very likely cost himself victory. The only real victory he has left to attain.
He prioritized his three goals for this year: “Win the Daytona 500, win the Brickyard 400 again . . . and win back-to-back championships.”
He said this to a handful of invited print reporters. This was a sort of graduate course for the few who at least have tried to understand Stewart in his storm-tossed career.
The session crowned a week that made it surely seem Stewart finally and fully had gained control of both himself and his position at the pinnacle of NASCAR. He orchestrated seriousness and wit appropriately.
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Walking away, the feeling was Tony Stewart was not only in control, he was in command.
Then the race.
First, Stewart was the victim of Jeff Gordon as they battled for the lead early. Gordon slid up in front of Stewart and sent them both scraping the wall, damaging their cars. Both dropped way back.
But Stewart again was hurtling toward the front, even in a bent-up car, when Kenseth drove alongside and Stewart’s priorities suddenly changed.
The next astounding event was NASCAR’s moderate penalty against him, for the understatement of “aggressive driving.” He merely was sent to the rear, but stayed on the lead lap.
Again, from the back, he charged. He wound up fifth. And I’m not so sure he wouldn’t have won, if he had not been distracted late in the race by his fury against an unnamed driver, to whom he referred on his radio channel only in vulgarisms.
Not even Bach, Mozart and Haydn provided any precedent, any warning of the advent of Beethoven.
Not even Allison and Earnhardt–nor even Stewart’s own raging bull of a mentor, A.J. Foyt–gave motor racing any warning of this relentless, ever-changing storm.
There is no understanding–only seeing and hearing, amazed anew at every turn.
Not hardly
If you think Chad Knaus, crew chief for Daytona 500 winner Jimmie Johnson, will back off his aggressive engineering just because of a four-race suspension, think again.
While he directs the team from the Hendrick Motorsports compound near Charlotte, and even when he comes back to the tour at Bristol, Tenn., the weekend of March 26, he won’t back down.
“We’re not going to go out there and pull punches,” Knaus said this week after his penalty was handed down for a technical violation caught after Daytona qualifying on Feb. 12. “We do everything we can to build the best race cars out there, and be as innovative as we possibly can–not only from my standpoint, but as a group.”
Hendrick employs 30 engineers and one of them, Darian Grubb, substituted for Knaus for the 500 and will continue in the role until Bristol.
Grubb is batting 1.000 as a crew chief, having responded flawlessly in the 500.
“I honestly wasn’t that nervous until the checkered flag fell,” Grubb reflected. “Everybody did their job. The pit stops were absolutely incredible. When they interviewed me on TV, I told them we had the best car and the best driver out there and he was in first, [so] why would I be nervous?”
Two seasons
Dale Jarrett’s team speaks for them all in making no bones about the difference between Daytona 500 week and Sunday’s settling into normal racing at California Speedway.
“UPS Team Ready for Start of NASCAR Regular Season,” reads the headline on the team’s weekly media update.
Jarrett, although he’s tied with Jeff Gordon for most Daytona 500 victories among active drivers with three, explains “You can’t count Daytona out of the season, but Speedweeks can feel like a season within the season.”
And he looks at the first unrestricted race “with a great deal of awareness that it is going to be an important indicator to us, and everybody in the garage, as to how our winter preparations went.”
The intermediate-size tracks “are the majority of the races we have on the schedule,” whereas there are only four restrictor-plate races, including the Daytona 500.
Local flavor
The California track, located just east of Los Angeles, has been dominated by relatively local drivers. Gordon of Vallejo has the most victories, three. Jimmie Johnson of El Cajon, brothers Kurt and Kyle Busch of Las Vegas, and Greg Biffle from up the coast in Vancouver, Wash., have one each. In all, West Coast drivers have won seven of the 11 Cup races run since the track opened in 1997.
Maybe it’s the warm reception from the L.A. crowd–most of the above-mentioned drivers get booed most other places they go.
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