Stewart Second in Atlanta 500 for Second Straight Year

Tony Stewart didn’t like the tire he raced on or the feel of his race car, but he liked the second-place finish he earned in Sunday’s Atlanta 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

The driver of the No. 20 Home Depot Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) struggled all weekend long getting comfortable with the handling of his race car. Diving into the track’s corners at nearly 190 mph proved to be a nerve-wracking experience, for the hard tire compound brought to Atlanta by Goodyear made Stewart’s car loose on entry and exit, but tight in the middle of the corners.

“That was the worst tire I’ve ever been on in my life in any professional form of racing,” stated Stewart bluntly. “It was just sliding around. They were loose in and loose off. Tight in the center. Just every aspect of the car that you were asking the car to do, it wouldn’t do because the tires couldn’t take it. They built such a hard tire – it was terrible.”

Crew chief Greg Zipadelli worked tirelessly on Friday, Saturday and throughout Sunday’s 325-lap affair to find a setup suited to Stewart’s liking. While none of the changes Zipadelli threw at the car’s chassis made a singular, dramatic improvement, collectively, they allowed Stewart to climb from his 32nd-place starting spot to second, the same result Stewart earned at this race last year.

“I’m really proud of our team, proud of Home Depot and really proud of the guys on our pit crew who had great pit stops today,” Stewart said. “This team never quits. It doesn’t matter how bad it is, we just never give up.”

Stewart’s second-place finish was his 12th top-10 finish in 19 races at Atlanta and his third top-10 finish in the four races held thus far in 2008. The effort brought Stewart up three spots to ninth in the Sprint Cup point standings, 140 points behind his JGR teammate Kyle Busch, who leads the championship point race by 73 markers over second-place Greg Biffle.

Busch won the Atlanta 500 in dominating fashion to further secure his place atop the championship standings. The 22-year-old led six times for a race-high 173 laps en route to his first win with JGR and his fifth career Sprint Cup victory in 118 races.

It also marked the first Sprint Cup win for Toyota, and the first win for a foreign manufacturer in the history of NASCAR’s top series since Al Keller won in a Jaguar at a race in Linden, N.J., in 1954.

Busch and Stewart’s 1-2 finish marked just the fourth time in JGR’s 17-year history that the organization has scored a 1-2 finish. The most recent 1-2 finish for JGR came on Aug. 12, 2007 when Stewart won the Sprint Cup race at the Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International road course while fellow JGR teammate Denny Hamlin finished second.

Prior to Stewart and Hamlin’s 1-2 finish at The Glen, JGR development drivers Joey Logano and Marc Davis finished 1-2 on April 19, 2007 in the NASCAR Camping World Series West race at Phoenix International Raceway.

JGR earned its first 1-2 finish on Nov. 14, 1999 at Homestead-Miami Speedway when Stewart won his third career Sprint Cup race with former JGR driver Bobby Labonte finishing second.

Hamlin wrestled his car to a 15th-place finish in the Atlanta 500 after his power steering failed on lap 198 of the 325-lap race. The result still gained him one spot in the championship standings, as Hamlin now sits 19th, 252 points arrears Busch.

In third behind Busch and Stewart in the Atlanta 500 was Dale Earnhardt Jr., while Biffle and Jeff Gordon rounded out the top-five. Clint Bowyer, Kevin Harvick, Matt Kenseth, Brian Vickers and Jeff Burton comprised the remainder of the top-10.

There were eight caution periods for 35 laps, with two drivers failing to finish the 500-mile race.

The next event on the Sprint Cup schedule is the March 16 Food City 500 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway. The race begins at 2 p.m. EDT with live, high-definition coverage provided by FOX beginning with its pre-race show at 1:30 p.m. The race will also be broadcast live on SIRIUS Satellite Radio Channel 128.