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Tony Stewart’s amazing 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup championship run left a lot of folks scratching their heads, including the top talent at Hendrick Motorsports.
Stewart won the Cup title by winning five of the 10 races in the Chase for the Sprint Cup — this after going winless in NASCAR’s 26-race regular season, when he posted just three top-five finishes.
In NASCAR vernacular, Stewart and then-crew chief Darian Grubb “found something” during the Chase, a setup that favored Stewart’s driving style or some combination of technical tweaks that allowed him to suddenly win race after race when he had been non-competitive early on. Stewart was especially effective on the 1.5-mile tracks in the Chase, winning three of the five races at that distance.
Asked late last year about the source of his sudden and dramatic performance improvement, Stewart said, “I’m not going to tell you. I might want to use it again.”
Stewart, of course, is both a driver and co-owner at Stewart-Haas Racing, which buys its chassis and engines from Hendrick Motorsports. SHR and Hendrick have an open-door policy of exchanging information with each other. Surprisingly, though, the Hendrick squad was unable to duplicate Stewart’s speed and mojo in the Chase last year.
“We’ve tried throwing their setup in the car at times, and just the whole mousetrap isn’t there, so it doesn’t work the same,” said five-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson. “Or there’s a bigger difference in how Tony and I drive.”
The bottom line is what Stewart likes in his setup doesn’t work for the Hendrick drivers.
“We’ve seen it — he (Stewart) can’t put a 48 setup in and have the same speed, and we can’t put a 14 setup in,” Johnson said. “So we think it goes deeper than the bolt-on parts, that there’s more to it than geometry and structural integrity of the cars.”
Hendrick driver Jeff Gordon said Stewart’s speed on 1.5-mile tracks became evident in the third race of the season at Las Vegas, where Stewart led 163 of 267 laps before finishing second to Carl Edwards.
“They should have won Vegas. They were the car to beat at Vegas, so let’s not forget that,” said Gordon. “When they were that strong at Vegas, we all went, ‘Whoa, what do they have there?’ We jumped on it. Every weekend, we tried that setup, and every weekend we went back to our old setup.”
Asked how Hendrick could supply cars to SHR and get beaten by them, Gordon said, “I still question that because we share information with them and have a great understanding of what’s going on. Some will tell you all of sudden Tony just had this, ‘Hey, we’re out of it. I don’t care anymore, let’s just go for broke,’ attitude. And then all of a sudden, he wins a race and the momentum took ‘em. And I’m a believer in momentum, but I’m not a believer in momentum from when you really weren’t able to win a race and then you win five of the final 10 races and win the championship. There’s more to it than just momentum.”
Johnson said a lot of the reason for Stewart’s title run was his own motivation and his ability to rally the team behind him.
“At the end of the day, we still know we got beat by our own equipment,” said Johnson. “And I put a lot of weight in the fact that it comes down to people. It’s crazy to think — and we all watched it — Tony thought he was going to waste a spot in the Chase. But for whatever reason, the people within that team, whatever motivated them, did, and it worked. And they went on a tear ... I really think the human element in today’s world is far more important than it was before.”
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
Stewart won the Cup title by winning five of the 10 races in the Chase for the Sprint Cup — this after going winless in NASCAR’s 26-race regular season, when he posted just three top-five finishes.
In NASCAR vernacular, Stewart and then-crew chief Darian Grubb “found something” during the Chase, a setup that favored Stewart’s driving style or some combination of technical tweaks that allowed him to suddenly win race after race when he had been non-competitive early on. Stewart was especially effective on the 1.5-mile tracks in the Chase, winning three of the five races at that distance.
Asked late last year about the source of his sudden and dramatic performance improvement, Stewart said, “I’m not going to tell you. I might want to use it again.”
Stewart, of course, is both a driver and co-owner at Stewart-Haas Racing, which buys its chassis and engines from Hendrick Motorsports. SHR and Hendrick have an open-door policy of exchanging information with each other. Surprisingly, though, the Hendrick squad was unable to duplicate Stewart’s speed and mojo in the Chase last year.
“We’ve tried throwing their setup in the car at times, and just the whole mousetrap isn’t there, so it doesn’t work the same,” said five-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson. “Or there’s a bigger difference in how Tony and I drive.”
The bottom line is what Stewart likes in his setup doesn’t work for the Hendrick drivers.
“We’ve seen it — he (Stewart) can’t put a 48 setup in and have the same speed, and we can’t put a 14 setup in,” Johnson said. “So we think it goes deeper than the bolt-on parts, that there’s more to it than geometry and structural integrity of the cars.”
Hendrick driver Jeff Gordon said Stewart’s speed on 1.5-mile tracks became evident in the third race of the season at Las Vegas, where Stewart led 163 of 267 laps before finishing second to Carl Edwards.
“They should have won Vegas. They were the car to beat at Vegas, so let’s not forget that,” said Gordon. “When they were that strong at Vegas, we all went, ‘Whoa, what do they have there?’ We jumped on it. Every weekend, we tried that setup, and every weekend we went back to our old setup.”
Asked how Hendrick could supply cars to SHR and get beaten by them, Gordon said, “I still question that because we share information with them and have a great understanding of what’s going on. Some will tell you all of sudden Tony just had this, ‘Hey, we’re out of it. I don’t care anymore, let’s just go for broke,’ attitude. And then all of a sudden, he wins a race and the momentum took ‘em. And I’m a believer in momentum, but I’m not a believer in momentum from when you really weren’t able to win a race and then you win five of the final 10 races and win the championship. There’s more to it than just momentum.”
Johnson said a lot of the reason for Stewart’s title run was his own motivation and his ability to rally the team behind him.
“At the end of the day, we still know we got beat by our own equipment,” said Johnson. “And I put a lot of weight in the fact that it comes down to people. It’s crazy to think — and we all watched it — Tony thought he was going to waste a spot in the Chase. But for whatever reason, the people within that team, whatever motivated them, did, and it worked. And they went on a tear ... I really think the human element in today’s world is far more important than it was before.”
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100.
