segunda-feira, 27 de junho de 2016

Who had more fun Sunday, Tony Stewart or crew chief for first career win?


Mike Bugarewicz has a hard enough job as a NASCAR Sprint Cup crew chief.
But that job just got a little easier – at least for one race – after his driver, Tony Stewart, won Sunday at Sonoma.
Not only was it Stewart’s first win since 2013 – and the 49th of his Sprint Cup career – it was also Bugarewicz’s first win atop a Cup pit box.
“I’ve only worked at Stewart-Haas (Racing), this is my third year, (the first) two years with Kevin (Harvick) as his engineer,” Bugarewicz said. “Every win is sweet whether I’m a race engineer or crew chief or whatever, it’s all great.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet that it was my first, but our goal from the beginning of the year was to get Tony back in victory lane, and I’m just so glad that we could get him there.”
Stewart made headlines Friday when he said during his weekly media availability that “driving a Sprint Cup car does not make me happy right now” ,and that is why he’s looking so forward to retiring at season’s end.
But after Sunday’s win, Bugarewicz said his driver’s mindset might have changed a bit more to the positive side of things – and that he certainly had some fun in Sunday’s win.
“I did not remember to ask him that,” Bugarewicz said about failing to ask Stewart if he was having fun before Sunday’s race. “I just assumed by the look of his face that he was enjoying it.
“One thing I will say, no matter what, every week it’s the last thing I say to him before I leave the car and he actually reminded me of that today.
“He said, ‘If I get angry and start yelling at you today, just remind me to have fun.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I know how that’ll work out for me.’ But no, we always talk about that. What’s most important for all of us is just enjoy it, take it in. You have to do that.”
While Bugarewicz and his team did everything they could to help Stewart to victory lane, in the end it was Stewart who did what he needed to do.
That included being mum on the team radio on the final lap.
“I stayed pretty quiet,” Bugarewicz said. “The spotter was keeping in touch with him. He didn’t say much, either.
“In those situations I just like to let (Stewart) concentrate and let him do his thing. He’s got a lot going on, especially at a place like this, so we just let him focus.”
But Bugarewicz also had something that only one other Sprint Cup team (six-time champ Jimmie Johnson) has — a driver with multiple Cup titles.
“Having a three-time champion who knew he had an opportunity today is a big thing,” Bugarewicz said. “At the end of the day, we only won because of his desire and his drive and his want.
“I truly believe that with these competitors and how good all the cars are and these top-tier drivers, that’s all it is. It’s a matter of who wants it more at the end of the day in most cases. Today, Tony wanted it more.”
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What drivers said after Sonoma race

Drivers had much to say after Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 won by Tony Stewart. Here’s what drivers said:
TONY STEWART — Winner: “I made mistakes the last two laps. I had just a little bit too much rear brake for Turn 7, and wheel-hopped it two laps in a row. But I felt a nudge when I got down there, and he knew where it was, and (Denny Hamlin) did the right thing doing it there; but if I could get to him, he knew what was coming. He told me he was proud of me. He knows what it means. We were teammates for a long time, and we respect each other a lot.”
DENNY HAMLIN — Finished 2nd: “Just like you heard Tony say, I thought with two or three to go, he pretty much had it, but he made a couple mistakes and allowed us to get pretty close, and then we just both wheel-hopped into (Turn) 7, and I just let off my wheel hop a little bit so I could get to his rear bumper and get him out of the groove just a touch. It was perfectly executed, but I was going through the esses knowing that I needed to get the biggest gap that I could … I didn’t run a low enough line in Turn 11 from wheel-hopping in Turn 7. I got the rears hot, wheel-hopped it a little bit again, got out of line and obviously gave him the inside line. We definitely had a car that should have won, but we were on the bad end of the deal.’’
Joey Logano — Finished 3rd: “I thought I could win the race there at the last lap when you are watching those two going into 7 and 11, and you’re running third.  You think you’re in a pretty good spot to win this thing.  I’m thinking that they’re most likely going to crash each other.  It was a fun race to watch.  Going into Turn 11 I was 100 percent sure that Denny was not going to win just by watching it, and we were right there on the cusp of trying to sneak one by.  It would have been a gift if we got it, but hey, take them anyway you can.”
Carl Edwards — Finished 4th:“I appreciate Dale (Earnhardt) Jr. giving me the space there. Joey (Logano) got loose, I got under him, and Dale was three-wide. It was fun to race. Congrats to Tony; I know he drove his heart out there. It’s pretty neat to see him in victory lane.”
Martin Truex Jr. — Finished 5th: “It was a lot of fun racing out there today. Feel like we had the best car, we just couldn’t get track position. Every time we would get past the guys that we were racing on the racetrack, caution would come out, and guys would beat us out of the pits. Little frustrated with that. Thought we had the car to win, and then that last set of tires we just got in position, and we just got too loose.”
Kevin Harvick – Finished 6th: “I’m just really proud of Tony (Stewart). That is really the best thing. We didn’t have a lot of good happen today. We fought all day on pit road and got a decent finish out of it. But other than that we had a little bit of a struggle with getting it to turn.”
Kyle Busch — Finished 7th: “I don’t know what happened at the end of the race, but thought we had a shot to end up in the top four at least. For some reason there at the end, it blew the rear tires off there at the end on the last run when I was trying to race those guys for the top four. I couldn’t even gain on them. I was just trying to hang with them. We just burned the rear tires off on that last run just trying too hard and went backwards.”
Kasey Kahne – Finished 9th: “We started off pretty good, and I just needed to be a little looser. We were on the tight side. So, we tried to loosen it up and for whatever reason it was the exact opposite. I got really tight then. So then we started going the other way with adjustments. We just kind of gave up the middle portion of the race.  If we hadn’t done that I think we were maybe bet
Kurt Busch – Finished 10th: “We battled really hard, I was somewhat surprised by the lack of grip in the rear of the car. It showed a little bit of that in practice, and some of the other guys had the same issues as far as our teammates. We just didn’t correct it enough. It’s my fault that I didn’t relay the information well enough. Congratulations to Tony Stewart, this is a huge day for SHR. To have three cars in the Chase, to have Tony’s confidence up, to have him battle Denny Hamlin like that this is the best way for a champion like him to go out.”
Jimmie Johnson – Finished 13th: “We were OK. We had the same strategy as the No. 14 going and then we were coming in the next lap, and the caution came out.  It kind of hurt us there to leap frog those guys and the transition we were looking for. We just kind of rode from there.”
AJ Allmendinger – Finished 14th: “Randall Burnett (crew chief) and all the guys Brain Burns, Tony Palmer, all my guys they did a great job.  We weren’t very good. We were pretty junky on Friday.  They worked hard to get this thing as good as it could be. Such a strange race. At one point you think the tires go off and then you find something and manage them again. I thought whatever it was, 25 to go, we were coming. So in the end just a bad pit stop and let the tire get away and penalty. That took away our chance to win the race.”
Brad Keselowski — Finished 15th: “It was a hot day. We had better speed than we’ve ever had before, but I just made too many mistakes.”
Greg Biffle — Finished 18th: “We had about a 16th-place car and that’s right about where we finished. We just fought all day and tried to hold our track position, but that’s just as fast as our car was. It was a really good call by Brian Pattie and the team on how to call the race. They did a great job. It couldn’t have worked out better for us, but that’s all we had.”
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — Finished 26th: “We just weren’t very good. We were really good on the long run, if I could save my tires, but I didn’t have any short-run speed. That really made the restarts tough to not lose any track position, but still not wear out my tires. We’ve got to go back to the drawing board for the road course here. We definitely struggled today.”
Ryan Blaney — Finished 23rd: “It was a long day. Early on we short-pitted and got some track position. We had some good fortune (with the second caution), but I gave all the spots right back.”
Trevor Bayne — Finished 25th: “We just ran around 25th all day. We tried some different strategies, but none of them seemed to work, and we never got any track position. I feel like I learned a lot, and we had decent speed at the end. We had top-15 speed, but we just never had track position.”
Clint Bowyer – Finished 40th: “It had to be the ignition. It was a wiring fire. I’ve had oil smoke and stuff like that before in the car blowing out but I’ve never had an electrical fire. Man it shook me out. I couldn’t breathe. I bailed out and the thing starts rolling, so I had to reach in and put it in gear. That’s a great start to the day.”
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Tony Stewart describes wild last-lap finish at Sonoma (video)


Tony Stewart has had some wild finishes in his career, but Sunday’s last lap victory — passing Denny Hamlin (and punting him slightly into the wall) on the last turn of the race — will likely rank among one of the wildest of Stewart’s career.
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domingo, 26 de junho de 2016

STEWART SNAPS 84-RACE SKID, FOILS HAMLIN IN SONOMA THRILLER

Tony Stewart rolled to victory Sunday at Sonoma Raceway, bumping past Denny Hamlin in the final turn to post his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series win of the season and keep his hopes alive for a fourth NASCAR Sprint Cup Series title in his final championship campaign.
Stewart, who led 22 of the 110 laps, guided the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 14 Chevrolet to a .625-second margin of victory in the Toyota/Save Mart 350. His third win on the 1.99-mile road course was the 49th of his Sprint Cup career.
Stewart, who missed the first eight races of his final NASCAR championship campaign, now has one component accomplished of his goal to make the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series playoffs. He'll need to advance into the top 30 in points, a position he's just nine points away from in 32nd.
Hamlin, who grabbed the lead from Stewart in Turn 7 on the final lap before sliding high in the last of 11 turns, led a race-high 33 laps and ended up second in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota. Joey Logano, the winner at Michigan in the series' previous race, took third place.
Edwards, who won the Coors Light Pole Award in Saturday's qualifying, led 24 laps and finished fourth in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 Toyota. Martin Truex Jr. rounded out the top five in the first of two road-racing events this season for the Sprint Cup Series.
Road-racing expert AJ Allmendinger led 20 laps in the JTG Daugherty No. 47 Chevrolet and finished 14th. His team was penalized for an uncontrolled tire on a Lap 88 pit stop, knocking him from contention.
Kyle Busch, a Sonoma winner one year ago, wound up seventh in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota.
Home-state driver Kyle Larson spent much of the day in the top five, but fell from contention with a pit-road speeding penalty in a Lap 70 stop. He finished 12th.
Notes: Clint Bowyer, a winner at Sonoma in 2012, was sidelined after completing just five laps by an electrical issue that filled the cockpit of his No. 15 Chevrolet with smoke. "Smoke is never good in the cockpit and it stinks. Hell, I couldn't breathe," said Bowyer, who finished last in the 40-car field. … Former NASCAR Next driver Dylan Lupton finished 35th in his Sprint Cup debut, the last driver on the lead lap. … Sunday before the race, Toyota -- the race co-sponsor and the track's official vehicle -- announced a three-year extension of its partnership with Sonoma Raceway. The deal continues a sponsorship that has been in place since 2007. … The series' next race is scheduled Saturday at Daytona International Speedway, which will host the Coke Zero 400 Powered by Coca-Cola (7:45 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM).
This story will be updated.

Sprint Cup pit stall assignments for today’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma

While Carl Edwards will start Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 from the pole at Sonoma Raceway, he’ll be in pit stall No. 11 and have an opening in front.
California native AJ Allmendinger has the first pit stall (stall No. 2) with Chase Elliott behind him.
By contrast, Aric Almirola and Tony Stewart have the last stalls on pit road.
Matt Kenseth lost his selection of pit stalls because his team received a fourth warning for an inspection issue that came before qualifying Saturday at Sonoma. Kenseth will have Brian Scott in front of him and Josh Wise behind.
Here’s how the pit stall assignments look:

Today’s Sprint Cup race at Sonoma: Start time, weather, radio/TV info and lineup

Here’s all you need to know for the first Sprint Cup road course race of the season.
(All times are Eastern):
START: Ruben Arminana, Sonoma State University President, will give the command to start engines at 3:08 p.m. Green flag is set for 3:20 p.m.
DISTANCE: The race is 110 laps (218.9 miles) around the 1.99-mile road course.
PRERACE SCHEDULE: Sprint Cup garage opens at 10 a.m. Driver/crew chief meeting is at 1 p.m. Driver introductions begin at 2:30 p.m. The invocation will be given at 3 p.m. by Tim Bove, track minister at Sonoma Raceway.
NATIONAL ANTHEM: Q Smith, Transcendence Theatre’s Broadway Under the Stars in Sonoma Valley, will perform the anthem at 3:01 p.m.
TV/RADIO: Fox Sports 1 will broadcast the race at 3 p.m. (RaceDay begins at 1:30 p.m.) Performance Racing Network’s broadcast on radio and at goprn.com begins at 2 p.m. SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will carry the PRN broadcast.
FORECAST: wunderground.com forecasts a temperature of 83 degree with 0 percent chance of rain at the start of the race.
LAST TIME: Kyle Busch took the lead with five laps left to win this race a year ago. Kurt Busch finished second with Clint Bowyer third. Jimmie Johnson led a race-high 45 laps and finished sixth.
STARTING LINEUP:

Byron takes over lead in Truck Series standings after Gateway

William Byron failed to earn his third straight NASCAR Camping World Truck Series win in Saturday’s Drivin for Linemen 200 at Gateway Motorsports Park.
Although he finished 17th, it still was a good day for the rookie driver as he jumped to the top of the Truck Series point standings.
Byron knocked Matt Crafton from the top spot. Byron leads Crafton by one point. Timothy Peters is five points behind Byron.
The series’ next race is July 7 at Kentucky Speedway.
Here’s how the Truck Series points look after Gateway: