TONY STEWART
Standing Tall as the Bar Rises
KANNAPOLIS, N.C., (Feb. 9, 2011) – Two championships. Thirty-nine wins. Twelve poles. One hundred and fifty-three top-five finishes. Two hundred and forty-seven top-10 finishes. Those are the numbers that Tony Stewart has accumulated in his 12 years as a full-time driver in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, the last two of which have been as a driver/owner with Stewart-Haas Racing, where the pilot of the No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevrolet Impala has nabbed six point-paying wins and two poles.
But despite the impressive figures, the most pressing matter of the moment is readying for the 2011 Sprint Cup season. The wins, the poles and the accolades of years past don’t mean much when another grueling, 36-race schedule looms ahead. For all intents and purposes, it’s just another series of never-ending performance reviews.
In 2011, those performance reviews will be watched in earnest. Not just because it’s Stewart who’s the last Sprint Cup champion not named Jimmie Johnson, but because he continues to defy the odds as a driver/owner in today’s NASCAR.
Not since Alan Kulwicki in 1992 when he won what was then the NASCAR Winston Cup Series championship has a driver/owner accomplished what Stewart has, which is consistently win races and contend for championships.
When Stewart took the point lead on May 31, 2009, he became the first driver/owner in 556 races to lead the Sprint Cup championship standings. And when Stewart won a week later at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway, he became the first driver/owner in 375 races to win a Sprint Cup race. Four point-paying wins and a Chase berth in 2009 segued to two point-paying victories and another Chase spot in 2010. All of which means expectations are high again in 2011.
In a sport where the bar is constantly being raised, Stewart always antes up. He’s able to do so because of longtime support from Office Depot, currently celebrating 25 years as a leading global provider of office supplies and services, and newcomer Mobil 1, the world’s leading synthetic motor oil brand. In NASCAR’s brave new world, it’s good to have world leaders on your side.
As a new season dawns with the advent of Daytona (Fla.) Speedweeks, Stewart and Co. are ready for the challenge. In 10 months when the checkered flag drops on the 2011 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the 5-foot, 9-inch Stewart aims to stand tallest among his racing brethren by raising a championship trophy just as he did in 2002 and 2005.