NASCAR WCUP: Tony Stewart Post Race Quotes, Pocono

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

July 30, 2001

TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:

(TWO CONSECUTIVE TOP-FIVE FINISHES - WHAT DOES THIS DO FOR MOMENTUM FOR YOU AND THE TEAM?) "It's great. We've struggled with our motor program and this is a place that's big on horsepower. They're making gains. I missed two shifts today and ran the thing up the first time to 9500 (rpms), and the second time I ran it all the way up to 10,000 (rpms) and it lived. It's a testament to how hard those guys have been working and it's showing we're starting to get some of our momentum back. We're starting to get a handle on it."

(HOW DOES RUNNING WELL HERE DO FOR YOU GOING TO THE BRICKYARD 400 NEXT WEEK?) "It's harder to pass at the Brickyard than it is to run here. In (Turn) 1 it gets pretty wide, you can run two-wide there and you can two-wide in (Turn) 3 at the beginning of the run. It's pretty tough to run two-wide at the Brickyard. A good run here shows your flat-track program is pretty good so it's encouraging, but at the same time it's no guarantee you're going to run well next week also."

(DOES THE CHANGE YOUR VIEW OF WHERE YOU STAND IN THE POINTS?) "Not unless the guys in front of me have two more days like this and we have two more days like we had today. I'm not even going to look at the points anymore. I'm tired of thinking about it and tired of people talking about it, to be honest. I'm going to try to go out and worry about trying to win races, and if you win enough races, the points take care of themselves."

(DID THE TWO CAUTIONS THAT CAME OUT WITH ABOUT 50-60 LAPS TO GO HELP YOU?) "It didn't really matter to me when the cautions came out. It was tight for us on fuel just like it was everyone else. On both of those yellows they told me to conserve as much fuel as possible. That was the only thing about those two cautions that was anything different than any other point in the race, just a matter of trying to save fuel. The rest was business as usual."

(YOU AND TEAMMATE BOBBY LABONTE SEEM TO HAVE GOOD 'END-OF-THE-RACE' CARS LATELY) "We knew the weather was going to be bad today, knew it was going to be overcast and cooler than yesterday. I know at least on our car, we planned for the racetrack being a little tighter than it was yesterday. We got too tight at the end still - we still didn't free it up enough. We just kept working all day. I'm starting to be a little more patient inside the car, and I don't get frustrated the second the race car doesn't drive right. Greg and I are probably communicating more on the radio than we ever have, as far as changes. He's letting me kind of pick changes that I want to do now. I'm not saying he's not doing it, he's just taught me enough that I feel like I have the confidence of knowing if we have one problem and there's three different solutions, which one's the one that I really think is going to make the car better instead of putting it all in Greg's hands and having him have to guess to pick which one's going to be right. I think our communication's getting better - we just keep working together making it better."

Text provided by Al Larsen

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