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KANNAPOLIS, N.C., (Oct. 5, 2011) \u2013 ABC\u2019s Wide World of Sports spanned the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport, but for the part about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, you need only to watch Tony Stewart race at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City.<\/p>\n
Stewart has two NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victories at the 1.5-mile oval, the most recent of which came in 2009. But sandwiched between that win and his first Sunflower State triumph in 2006 where he successfully gambled on fuel mileage, Stewart played the role of Vinko Bogataj \u2013 the ski jumper whose spectacular crash on March 21, 1970 was featured on Wide World of Sports from the early 1970s onward as the late Jim McKay uttered, \u201c\u2026and the agony of defeat\u201d.
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\nThat\u2019s because Stewart\u2019s victory at Kansas in 2009 should\u2019ve been the third Kansas win for the driver of the No. 14 Office Depot\/Mobil 1 Chevrolet Impala, as the defeat Stewart endured at Kansas in 2007 was indeed agony.<\/p>\n
Stewart was in the lead when a downpour forced NASCAR officials to wave the red flag and halt the event. With heavy rains, along with thunder and lightning, pelting the track well past the halfway point of the race, Stewart appeared to have his 33rd career Sprint Cup victory and his fourth win of 2007 locked up. <\/p>\n
The two-time Sprint Cup champion had come from his 19th-place starting position to lead three times for 13 laps, and appeared ready to log his first win in the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup and take a substantial lead in the championship standings. But after an almost two-and-a-half hour effort to dry the track, the race was restarted and what Stewart once thought was his was now fair game for the race\u2019s other contenders.<\/p>\n
Before the restart, Stewart pitted for tires and fuel and held onto the lead as other drivers followed his strategy. But when a multi-car accident on lap 157 stacked up cars off turn two, Stewart had to get on the brakes hard to avoid getting collected in the crash. Stewart was able to dive low to escape most of the carnage, but not without some damage to the left-front corner of his racecar. As the field rode around under caution, the damage appeared cosmetic, and with track position at a premium, Stewart stayed on the racetrack. But once the race went back to green and Stewart returned to speed, the damage to the left-front fender proved troublesome, as the crinkled fender rubbed against the tire each time Stewart dove into the corners.<\/p>\n
On lap 175, the tire deflated, and while Stewart waved to the drivers behind him that he was slowing, it wasn\u2019t enough. Kurt Busch came upon Stewart quickly and wasn\u2019t able to maneuver away from him. The bumper of Busch\u2019s Dodge made contact with the rear of Stewart\u2019s car, sending Stewart sideways into the SAFER Barrier on the outside retaining wall. Stewart\u2019s battered racecar then slid down the apron and into the path of fellow Chase driver Carl Edwards.<\/p>\n
Stewart was unhurt, but the car was done for the day with heavy rear-end damage. The accident and resulting 39th-place finish also impacted Stewart\u2019s standing in the Chase. He dropped two spots to fourth and 117 points behind series leader Jimmie Johnson. Johnson would go on to win the second of his five straight championships while Stewart finished the year sixth in points.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that juxtaposition that makes Kansas such an interesting venue, and why Stewart \u2013 a man with two wins, five top-fives, eight top-10s and a lap completion rate of 98.5 percent in 11 career Sprint Cup starts at Kansas \u2013 makes for such an interesting competitor when the series returns to Kansas this weekend for Sunday\u2019s Hollywood Casino 400, round No. 4 of the 10-race Chase.<\/p>\n
Winless during the 26-race regular season, Stewart ripped off back-to-back wins to start this year\u2019s Chase, which put him atop the championship standings. The first of those two wins came at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., the sister track to Kansas. It\u2019s a victory that bodes well for Stewart in his return to Kansas this weekend, as the two tracks are as close as two tracks can be. Both are 1.5-mile, D-shaped ovals and both came on the Sprint Cup scene in 2001.<\/p>\n
Stewart has won and lost at both venues, which means his tendency to find victory lane after 10 years of competing at each track is refined. The Chicagoland win is proof of that, as is Stewart leading twice for 20 laps in his June visit to Kansas where a win was in sight before he was undone by a thirsty fuel cell.<\/p>\n
Already having endured the agony of defeat at Kansas \u2013 this past June and most memorably in 2007 \u2013 Stewart is again ready for the thrill of victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KANNAPOLIS, N.C., (Oct. 5, 2011) \u2013 ABC\u2019s Wide World of Sports spanned the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport, but for the part about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, you need only to watch Tony Stewart race at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City. Stewart has two NASCAR Sprint […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[15775,4148],"class_list":["post-8207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-tony-stewart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}