Stewart recovers, finishes ninth

Sunday, Sep. 27, 2009

DOVER, Del. – Tony Stewart never anticipated – the accident on Lap 32 of Sunday’s AAA 400 or the difficult time he would have trying to remain in the championship race.

As several cars slowed in front of him, rookie Joey Logano slowed, too, and Stewart plowed into the back of him. Logano turned down the track, spun and then bolted back up and into the path of several cars.

They struck hard and sent his No. 20 Toyota flipping seven times down the track.

No one was hurt, but Stewart – trying to win his third Cup title – ended up with a large hole in the nose of his No. 14 Chevrolet.

“I’ve never felt sicker in my life than when we hit Joey like that. We hit him a ton,” Stewart said. “I didn’t see it coming – that was the worst part.

“He had to check up, something happened in front of him to make him have to do that, and I don’t know what it was. When he did, we drilled him in a spot where we were supposed to be wide-open on the race track.”

After a nearly 24-minute red flag to clean the track of debris, Stewart pitted and his crew went to work, shaping a large piece of metal to cover the hole. Stewart rejoined the field in 33rd place and with the help of fast pit stops, rallied for a ninth-place finish at Dover International Speedway.

Stewart actually gained a position in the points race. He is now fifth, 106 behind leader Mark Martin and still within striking distance with eight races remaining.

“I saw the piece of metal they put on the front and I don’t know how big the hole is underneath, it but they said it was pretty good size,” Stewart said. “I’m pretty proud of the effort they made to get it right.

“You’ve got to have patience here – 400 miles is a long day here. I think that happened on Lap 32 and we had almost the whole day still left. We had to be smart.”

Even with Stewart’s car running well, the team elected to try a change in pit strategy late in the race (pitting while many of the leaders stayed out) to get the best finish possible. A difficult time racing in traffic slowed Stewart’s final charge.

“We made a gamble and we got hung up behind some cars that took two tires,” said crew chief, Darian Grubb. “We’ll take that.

“Like Tony says, we’ll regret what we did, not what we didn’t do.”

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