If Tony Stewart wins Sunday’s LifeLock 400 at Kansas Speedway, it won’t be the way he won there last year: in all-out gambling mode on fuel mileage.
His car ran out of gas just as it passed beneath the checkered flag.
More Top Picks Best Heated Dog Beds
“We were able to take the chance because we had nothing to lose,” he said. “Not being in the Chase gave us that opportunity to take the chance and run for it.
“It’s not a chance we can take this year.”
This time Stewart is back in the thick of the playoffs, only two points behind Chase leader Jeff Gordon. Third place Jimmie Johnson is only two points behind Stewart, and Kyle Busch is six behind Johnson.
Stewart, though, may have done himself some harm Saturday after morning practice when he used an expletive before a live television camera in telling a reporter to get the camera away from him. NASCAR takes away points and fines drivers for such actions, as it did to Stewart earlier this season.
His defense of not knowing the camera was live might not work. That strategy failed for Juan Pablo Montoya, who tried it after flipping his middle finger at a camera in his car earlier this year.
If he isn’t docked, Stewart may not need to gamble to win if his dominant victory in July at Chicagoland Speedway, nearly identical to the 1.5-mile Kansas City track, is an indication.
Stewart led 108 laps at the Joliet track on his way to his first victory of the season and the start of one of his notorious summer hot streaks, three triumphs in four races.
“You aren’t going to find any two tracks that are more identical than Kansas and Chicago,” Stewart said. “You’d like to think that if you had success at one track, you’d have success at the other. … [But] as fast as technology changes, what worked [in July] might not work now.”
Meanwhile, Johnson has his own problems. He had an accident in his top car Saturday so he has to give up his pole position and start from the rear. Johnson clearly had had the fastest car in practice this week. The bright spot, for him, is that he won in August driving his backup in California.
Make room for new stars
If you doubt the demographics and geography of NASCAR have shifted, get this.
Fans in metropolitan Kansas City will get something they never have had before in the seven-year history of NASCAR racing there: two local favorites in serious contention for the Nextel Cup championship.
By contrast, in the next race, Alabama fans will have zero local favorites in the Chase at Talladega on Oct. 7. Of even more significance, North Carolina fans will have no native Chasers to pull for at Charlotte on Oct. 13.
Clint Bowyer of Emporia, Kan., is fifth in the Chase standings, just 18 points behind Gordon.
Carl Edwards of Columbia, Mo., is sixth, 28 back — and he would have been third, three points behind Gordon and one behind Stewart, if NASCAR hadn’t docked him 25 points last week after his car failed inspection after his victory Sunday at Dover, Del.
But Chase mode doesn’t include taking extra chances just to try to win for the home folks.
“You want to run good in front of your hometown crowd,” Bowyer said. “But come race time, you strap the helmet on and you can’t worry about that. You have to do what it takes to win that championship at the end of the year.”
Status-quo schedule
The 2008 schedule for the renamed Sprint Cup, announced last week, contains no changes from 2007 — not even minor ones that had been rumored.
There had been talk NASCAR would move one of the three off weekends of spring and summer into the fall to alleviate the incessant grind.
But for ’08, after a weekend off between Chicagoland on July 12 and Indianapolis July 27, there will be the usual 17 race weekends in a row, finishing at Homestead-Miami on Nov. 16.
More Top Picks Science Of Reading Vs Balanced Literacy What Parents Should Know
———-