Stewart Rallies to Fourth in Food City 500

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Tony Stewart earned his best result of the still young 2014 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season by finishing fourth in the rain-delayed Food City 500 Sunday at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.

It was an impressive outing considering Stewart started the race 37th in the 43-car field. His No. 14 Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 Chevrolet SS for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) was a handful on Friday in the weekend’s opening practice, and that day’s qualifying session proved no better. But in the two practices on Saturday, Stewart and crew chief Chad Johnston made incremental gains, and they ended the final practice session with a Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 Chevy that had a fighting chance for Sunday.

“To start 37th and end up fourth today, I’m pretty excited about that,” Stewart said. “I’m really excited for Chad Johnston and everybody on this Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 team. Everybody just worked hard all weekend. We had a long way to go from Friday when we weren’t very good, and every day we just got better and better. So, I’m really proud of this team.” 

Forty laps into the 503-lap race, which went three laps beyond its scheduled 500-lap distance due to a late caution before rain ended the race for good, Stewart climbed 10 spots to 27th. After a caution for debris on lap 60, Stewart cracked the top-20.

Stewart ran in and around the top-20 before rain interrupted the race on lap 136.

When racing resumed nearly three-and-a-half hours later, Stewart and Johnston continue to make their Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 Chevy better. Smart strategy calls by Johnson also aided the cause, the first of which came when Johnson kept Stewart on the .533-mile oval following a caution on lap 157 that bumped him up to 14th.

Stewart stayed in that spot through the midpoint of the race, but by lap 275, was knocking on the door of the top-10.

With a blistering pace being set by the leaders, many were experiencing tire problems, but not Stewart. Johnston told Stewart after a four-tire pit stop on lap 278: “Tires look great. You’re doing a good job taking care of them.”

Stewart held steady on the outside of the top-10 before finally breaking through with help from Johnston. A savvy, two-tire pit stop while under caution on lap 425 propelled Stewart to seventh when racing resumed on lap 430.

Stewart dropped to ninth but never any lower, and when his SHR teammate Kevin Harvick suffered misfortune on lap 451 when a broken oil line sent him out of the lead and into the turn one wall, Stewart took advantage of the resulting calamity. As cars stacked up to avoid Harvick, Stewart motored low and emerged from the chaos in fourth.

Stewart held the position through the race’s final laps to pick up his seventh top-five in 30 career Sprint Cup starts at Bristol and his 180th top-five in 525 career Sprint Cup starts.

“If you come out of this place with a top-five, you’ve had a good day,” Stewart said. “Track position was big, like it always is here. We were pretty strong at the end, but we just couldn’t run those guys down in front of us. Happy with the day that we had.”

Making the finish even more meaningful for Stewart was that it came as the three-time Sprint Cup champion continues to recover from a broken right leg sustained last August, which forced him to miss the final 15 races of the 2013 season.

“To come to Bristol and run 500 laps here and get a top-five is just what the doctor ordered,” Stewart said. “It’s big. This is a physical place. If you look at the lap times we were running – mid-15 second laps around here all day – it’s no walk in the park, by any means. It’s not a win, I know that, but it feels like a win.

“It’s something I needed, for sure. Obviously for Chad and I to work together for the first time for four or five races into the season and be able to get a top-five at Bristol, that is pretty big for us. We had a really good car, very balanced and very driveable. Chad just kept working on it all day and making it better for us.”

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