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Aaron’s 499

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Tony Stewart Tries To Turn It Around

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If Tony Stewart is going to make a move in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, the three-time champion might want to consider doing so sooner rather than later. As the drivers come to Talladega Superspeedway for Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 (1 PM ET, Fox), Stewart is in a big hole.

A few numbers will put Stewart’s struggles in perspective. With 207 points, he’s 41 back of playoff qualification as a wild-card. That’s a problem, but hardly insurmountable—one win puts Stewart back into a wild-card slot. But Stewart is a driver that’s not only won three Sprint Cups (2002, 2005, 2011), he’s been in the Top 10 every year but one since he came onto the circuit in 1999. And that one non-Top 10 year? He finished 11th.

This year Stewart is not only well behind the leaders, but only finished in the top 10 one time. It turns out his 41st-place finish at Daytona set the tone for the early part of his season. Of the last seven races, Stewart’s been out of the Top 20 four different times, as low as 31st and has only held the lead in two races this year.

I asked TheSportsNotebook’s NASCAR junkie, my brother Bill, the reason for the trouble and he placed the blame on the Stewart team. Echoing words he told me last week when we briefly touched on this topic, Bill blamed the setups that are causing problems for all the drivers on the Stewart-Haas Team. “They’re behind the curve on the mile and a half tracks and most of the tracks are a mile and a half,” Bill said. “Without good setups, you struggle all race.” Stewart’s problems are shared by fellow team drivers Ryan Newman and Danica Patrick, although at least they have the excuse that they aren’t a part owner of the team.

If we were going to pick a week for Stewart to turn it around, Talladega would be it. It’s a superspeedway, which Bill termed “the equalizer”, the long tracks and wide open racing that create uncertainty. “There’s some been both spectacular wrecks and spectacular wins,” he noted. Bill’s thesis that the entire Stewart-Haas Team’s troubles can be focused on the size of the track is backed up by the fact that Patrick ran strongly at Daytona—and if you’re looking for a model for Talladega, the track at Daytona would be it.

The Las Vegas oddsmakers are also expecting uncertainty in this race, as no one is a prohibitive favorite. You normally see the favorite’s odds come in at 6-1 or maybe 8-1. This week? Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch are each slotted as the 10-1 co-favorite. What’s more revealing is that twelve drivers are stacked between 10-1 and 15-1, so Vegas is clearly on board with the “anything goes” approach to Sunday’s race.

HAMLIN & LOGANO

Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano had a highly publicized feud after the former hurt his back earlier in the season. Hamlin has been cleared by the doctors to race and will be back at Talladega. Logano, in an unrelated event, lost the first appeal of a points penalty that was given to both him and defending champ Brad Keselowski.

While the penalty is the same for both Keselowski and Logano, it’s more important to the latter. Logano is thirty points out of a wild-card playoff spot coming into Sunday and twenty-five of those points are due to the sanction. Keselowski is seventh and still in comfortable shape to qualify for the postseason, at which time his point totals won’t matter.

NASCAR Sunday At Talladega Super Speedway

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The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series goes to Talladega’s Super Speedway for the Aaron 499 on Sunday at Noon ET (Fox). The race for the Cup, currently in the early second quarter of the racing schedule, has gotten tight. Greg Biffle is still on top, but you have now three other drivers all within ten points of the lead. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is just five back, closely followed by Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth.

Kenseth got this season off to a rousing start when he won the Daytona 500 back in February and Sunday’s race at Talladega is the first race since then that has been on a Super Speedway. Regular readers know that TheSportsNotebook’s NASCAR consultant is my brother Bill, but he’s currently on a trucking run that has him indisposed. But while I wasn’t able to complete insights, he had told me in a previous conversation that a super speedway track is a “great equalizer” in that it renders pole position all but meaningless.

Here at Talladega, Clint Bowyer has equalized more than most, winning two races over the past two years (a second race is held in October). The only other driver to have multiple wins here over the last five years is Jeff Gordon and that came off a 2007 sweep. So Bowyer has demonstrated that he and his crew  know what they’re doing on this track. Last week’s race at Richmond was won by Kyle Busch, who had a similarly strong record at that particular track.

After the top four in the standings, there’s a dropoff to the next group of Martin Truex, Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick, who range from 20-25 points off the pace. And the ultimate dividing line right now is the Top 10, the cutoff point for the drivers that qualify for The Sprint For The Cup in September, and the Top 10 is rounded out by Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards and Ryan Neuman. Although, all three are far off the pace and the Sprint isn’t like a playoff tournament where everyone goes back to even. It’s more like if a baseball season recalibrated its standings on September 1 to increase the chances of an exciting finish. It will help those like Stewart, Edwards and Neuman, but they’d still have more work to do than anyone else.

Fortunately for them and the rest of the drivers, the time is still there to make a move up the standings and those moves need to start on Sunday afternoon in Alabama.