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Tony Stewart's experience has made him a WARRIOR ROAD
He enters Sunday's AMD at The Glen, a 90-lap race run on the 11-turn, 2.45-mile course, having won the past two races and three out of the past four there. He's also quite adept at Infineon Raceway, the other road course on the Nextel Cup circuit. His two victories there, including one last year, give him five road-course wins in 15 career starts, and he has four other top10 finishes on road courses. Although Stewart came through the ranks driving sprint and open-wheel cars on oval tracks, he credits his early years in go-carts with helping him adapt to tracks that require turning right and left. "As far as full-size cars, you didn't see a lot of road racing in my background, [but] the fact that I did race go-carts taught me a lot about road-course racing," Stewart said during a teleconference last week. "It was just a matter of learning and adapting to a 3,400-pound car on a road course."
"It just took awhile learning what to do, shifting gears to figure out what we had to do to be fast," he said. But like races at every other type of track, no matter how talented the driver, it takes a well-prepared car to win. And for Stewart, that's the responsibility of crew chief Greg Zipadelli, who has led Stewart's crew throughout his Cup career. Zipadelli, speaking on the same teleconference with Stewart, said he and his crew put a lot of effort into their road-racing program. "We worked really hard two years ago and really spent some time and put ourselves out on a limb, bought some new cars and did a lot of things I didn't do the first couple of years," he said. "You know, just made some gains, made our cars a lot better. With that, it's made Tony Stewart a lot better, and vice versa. "Him being better has let me make my cars better." Zipadelli said Stewart's skillsand focus give him an advantage at all tracks, but especially road courses. "The person that wins a lot of these road races is usually the person that makes the least amount of mistakes," he said. "So that goes back to that level of concentration and focus." And, Zipadelli said, Stewart is openminded about the car's setup and talented enough to adapt to new combinations of shocks and springs. That allows the crew to try new tricks and quickly abandon those that aren't producing the desired results. "We've been together eight years, [and] think he's looked at the setup sheet two three times," Zipadelli said. "He doesn't care what's in there. He gives you input, you go on and you do your stuff. ... His open-mindedness and the ability to just go out and drive and give you good feedback and adapt to what you give him, I think, makes him a big part of what he is."
WATKINS GLEN INTERNATIONAL |
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