Tony Stewart's failure to repeat as Winston Cup champion is part of atrend in NASCAR
Listen to Greg Zipadelli, crew chief for Tony Stewart, and you quickly gain insight into why Stewart won't successfully defend his Winston Cup title this season. A notoriously slow starter, the Home Depot team came out of the blocks stronger than ever this season, Zipadelli points out, and even stood second in points after the race at Darlington in March. Then the season turned sour.
Tony Stewart's failure to repeat as Winston Cup champion is part of atrend in NASCAR
Stewart finished 25th or worse in six of the seven races following Darlington, including consecutive finishes of 41st, 41st, and 40th.
First, there was a disaster at Bristol in a race that began the team's troubles. "Even after getting a fender torn off and bending a ball joint we were still going to salvage what had been a bad day--which is what you do when you're in the championship hunt," says Zipadelli. "Then an oil line, because of one of the wrecks, got pinched and killed the motor. We end up 30th."
The hard luck continued. "Then it was Texas (and a 34th)," continues Zipadelli, "running eighth or ninth, and we lost a motor with 30 to go."
The predictable struck at Talladega, where Stewart finished 25th. "We were in a wreck and we had had a very strong car," adds Zipadelli.
Martinsville's sixth-place finish was the lone bright spot, before California was the scene of an engine failure--and a finish of 41st. Richmond brought a crash and another 41st. At Charlotte, engine failure produced a finish of 40th.
Zipadelli lists his team's misfortunes in the first half of the season with the scripted nonchalance of a corporate CEO standing before a board of directors and defending his company's sudden drop in the stock market.
But there's no script for the bad racing luck that has plagued the No. 20 Home Depot team this season. And this is not a crew chief making excuses for rotten performance. This is one of the top wrenches in the sport offering analysis on his team's woes. Zipadelli's delivery is as unscripted as one of the five engine failures his team experienced in the first half of this season.
Yet Zipadelli understands that trying to explain bad racing luck is as hopeless as making up 717 points--the margin Stewart faced from 11th to first after 23 races--in the final third of the season.