Saturday night after finishing second in the Budweiser Shootout, Stewart offered a very comprehensive explanation as to why he would rather run in the packs and why Saturday night's race may have been a lot more wild than what will take place in next Sunday's Daytona 500.
"My point is this is better than having to sit there and stare at the back of a spoiler for 500 miles and not be able to see where you're going half the race. We had control of what lane we got to run in. We got to move whenever we wanted. You didn't have to not move because you had a guy behind you that you had to rely on making your decision on what he had to do also. We had more control as drivers today," Stewart said.
"Look at the
history of this race. They always crash here. Go to Talladega, they crash cars
there. It's a yard sale every time we go to a restrictor
"It's not
that bad. It's the Bud Shootout. Everybody pushes the envelope. Everybody
tries to see what that limit is, what that boundary is. When it comes to
Sunday, you have to race 500 miles, you have to make it last till the end. It's
not that they're not conscious of the fact you have to make it to lap 75
tonight, but you have the flexibility of not worrying about points standings and
not worrying about the 500 title, losing it if you make a mistake tonight.
"The
competition is so tight, you have to try things tonight. If you don't, somebody
else is and they're going to learn from it whether it's right, wrong or
indifferent. You had to be aggressive tonight and you had to see what you can
get away with. You have to try things. It's a great opportunity for trial and
error.
"As you saw
tonight, it worked out sometimes and it didn't work out a lot of times. The
guys that crashed, it didn't work out, there's something they took away from it
and said, That didn't work out so well. Just like last night when I crashed
Kurt (Busch), that wasn't even close to what I had in mind for practice, but that's what
happened. It's part of the trial and error process. You have to go through
that.
"Forty-three cars can
win this race a week from tomorrow. If you don't push yourself into figuring
out what you can or can't do, I would rather do it with my Shootout car than I
would with my 500 car."
Totally agree with Tony.
ReplyDeleteTwo car racing was un-watchable.
Tony - again - was wrong. "2-car racing" produced 75 lead changes PER RACE in 2011. His arguments about control are dishonest because with the 2-car drafts he could go to the lead FAR more easily than with the pack - real control means you can go to the lead when you have to; if you're stopped it's by other drivers passing you, not because race conditions such as handling are getting in the way. Racers are supposed to want power to pass; if they're worrying more about fictitious "control" then they're going about this wholly wrong.
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