“Go West young man, go West and grow up with the country.” That quote is attributed to the late American newspaper editor and 1872 presidential candidate Horace Greely. The phrase, one of the most commonly used quotes from the early 19th century, was used by Greely to encourage the territorial expansion of the United States, a notion commonly referred to as Manifest Destiny.
While there is some debate among historians as to whether Greely coined the phrase or simply borrowed it from a peer for one of his editorials, there is little question the idea of Manifest Destiny helped shape the contiguous United States as it exists today. Since the era of expansion, however, Manifest Destiny has evolved and, in some respects, become a very general view that is manipulated for the purpose of supporting a variety of political views, social issues and pop culture lore.
For example, some could say that NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Tony Stewart exercised a version of Manifest Destiny one year ago when he went two for three during the early-season Western swing of the Sprint Cup schedule, bouncing back from a 22nd-place finish at Phoenix International Raceway by winning a week later at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and two weeks after that, winning again at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif.
Aside from a mid-March visit to Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, NASCAR spends the next month competing west of the Mississippi River. Phoenix, Las Vegas and Fontana all make up the Western swing, and it begins anew with this weekend’s Subway Fresh Fit 500k at Phoenix.
Stewart qualified second for last year’s spring race at the mile-long oval in the Arizona desert. He led nine laps and was in position for a top-10 finish when a freak, mid-race engine issue dropped him to 22nd. But Stewart quickly put that disappointment behind him, winning at Las Vegas to score his first victory at the track and winning at Fontana to log his second Sprint Cup win at that track.
That kind of early success is what Stewart is striving for again, as a crash in the season-opening Daytona 500 last Sunday left Stewart a distant 41st in the 43-car field. Victory at Phoenix would quickly move Stewart up in the all-important championship point standings, something the three-time champion (2002, 2005, 2011) is keenly aware of.
But Stewart is also aware of a new variable – NASCAR’s sixth-generation (Gen-6) Sprint Cup car. According to the NASCAR calendar, Phoenix marks the second race for the Gen-6 car, but to many, it’s the first true test of a teams’ program.
The first race for the Gen-6 car was last Sunday at Daytona, but that track is an anomaly on the Sprint Cup schedule. For that race, teams built slick racecars, sculpted them in the wind tunnel, and then fitted those cars with engines designed to mine horsepower from the constraints of a horsepower-choking restrictor plate.
Phoenix is the bellwether track, as it’s the first venue on the 36-race Sprint Cup schedule where mechanical grip is as important as horsepower and aerodynamics. It’s where teams will discover who has found the most efficient way to make their new Gen-6 car go fast.
For Stewart, who wears the dual title of driver and owner of Stewart-Haas Racing, Phoenix represents a race within a race – the one on the track and the one at the race shop, where one-upmanship during the week determines who’s No. 1 on Sunday. Come Friday when practice begins, Stewart tosses his car owner hat aside in favor of a Simpson helmet. He’ll want his No. 14 Bass Pro Shops/Mobil 1 Chevrolet SS to the best of the bunch.
Considering Stewart’s experience at Phoenix, success isn’t hoped for – it’s expected. The Columbus, Ind., native has been racing and winning at Phoenix since 1993. In the Sprint Cup Series alone, Stewart has scored one win, eight top-fives, 11 top-10s and has led a total of 555 laps in 22 career starts – all while being a model of consistency, completing all but 14 of an available 6,941 laps for a completion rate of 99.8 percent. And that’s only a small portion of the action Stewart has seen at Phoenix.
In addition to Sprint Cup cars, Stewart has made laps at Phoenix in NASCAR Nationwide Series cars, Indy cars, Supermodifieds and USAC Midget and Silver Crown cars during the course of the last 30 years. There isn’t another driver on the circuit who has logged more laps at Phoenix in as many different cars as Stewart. It’s his ability to adapt and adjust to different cars that not only gives Stewart a leg up on the competition in regard to being able to get a quick handle on the Gen-6 car, but it effectively places him in a league of his own, much like those Western pioneers who followed the creed of Manifest Destiny.
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