KERNERSVILLE, N.C. (Feb. 14, 2011) – It’s trivia time.
Question: Name the one driver other than Tony Stewart who has won the season-opening NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway in the last six years?
Answer: Kevin Harvick in 2007.
Beginning in 2005, Stewart has won the opening round of the Nationwide Series at Daytona every year with the exception of 2007, when Harvick proved victorious. In that race, Stewart finished eighth. Every other year, it’s Stewart who’s been to victory lane, and he’s done it driving for three different car owners – Joe Gibbs in 2008, Rick Hendrick in 2009 and Harvick in 2005, 2006 and 2010.
As he defends his DRIVE4COPD 300 win, Stewart will do it from familiar confines. He’ll again be behind the wheel of a No. 4 Oreo/Ritz Chevrolet Impala, and it will again be prepared by Kevin Harvick Inc. (KHI).
Stewart’s history with KHI is strong. After 41 career Nationwide Series starts stretched out over five seasons, Stewart finally scored his first Nationwide Series victory when he won the 2005 season-opener at Daytona driving for what was then an upstart KHI. While it was Stewart’s first Nationwide Series win, it was also the first for the team owned by Harvick and wife DeLana. When Stewart came back to Daytona a year later and successfully reclaimed his victory, it was career win No. 2 for Stewart and career win No. 2 for KHI.
Now they’re back together at the racetrack that put KHI on the map and provided Stewart his long-awaited Nationwide Series victory. Ironically, Stewart has nine career Nationwide Series wins and KHI also has nine career Nationwide Series wins heading into this year’s DRIVE4COPD 300.
Coming right out of the box and winning on the Nationwide Series’ biggest stage has become a familiar storyline for Stewart, and if he is to repeat the performance yet again and go for four straight wins in the season-opener, it will be hugely appropriate as Stewart is carrying the colors of two products that always delight right out of the box.
His representation of Kraft Foods’ Oreo and Ritz brands on the No. 4 Chevrolet fielded by KHI is a byproduct of the company’s holistic partnership with Stewart and the Sprint Cup team he co-owns with Haas Automation founder Gene Haas – Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR).
The iconic Oreo cookie and Ritz cracker brands are SHR’s official cookie and cracker, with Stewart and his Sprint Cup teammate Ryan Newman carrying the brand’s colors on their respective uniforms and cars. But adding some flavor to the pairing of Stewart and Kraft Foods is the No. 4 Oreo/Ritz Chevrolet. Just as it’s the figurative vehicle to carry the partnership of Oreo and Ritz with Stewart, it’s also the literal vehicle Stewart will use in his attempt to put Oreo and Ritz inside Daytona’s victory lane for a second straight year.
While there are a lot of similarities between last year’s race and this year’s, there is one major difference – the car. A new generation of Nationwide Series car is running full-time this season after a four-race rollout in 2010. While it’s akin to the kind of car Stewart competes with regularly in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, it’s still an unknown – at least to Stewart, whose first time in the new-generation Nationwide Series car will come this week in the practice and qualifying sessions that lead in to the DRIVE4COPD 300.
But with Stewart’s diverse racing background where in more than 30 years he’s driven and won in nearly every kind of racecar imaginable – from USAC Sprint Cars and Indy cars to NASCAR stock cars and dirt late models – the change, while substantial, is one that Stewart has quickly and successfully adapted to before.
So with one shot at a Nationwide Series win this season, for Daytona is the only Nationwide Series race he will contest in 2011, Stewart plans on being “won” and done when the checkered flag drops on the DRIVE4COPD 300.