Stewart tabs Talladega race ‘boring’, looks ahead to Charlotte
13 Comments Published October 11th, 2007 in NASCAR News
On his weekly SIRIUS NASCAR Radio show “Tony Stewart Live,” Stewart and co-host Matt Yocum discussed Sunday’s restrictor plate race at Talladega SuperSpeedway and looked ahead to this Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Charlotte.
Recapping Sunday’s UAW-Ford 500:
Co-host Matt Yocum: “If you can think of one word that summed up the weekend in Talladega what would it be?”
Tony Stewart: “Well, the race itself, boring. Everything outside the race was actually fun. I got to hang out with all my fellow deputies from the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department and the Police Department from Fayette and went to the Talladega short track like we always do and watched the late model races over there. So, had fun when we weren’t in the car. In the car wasn’t a lot of fun this weekend.”
Stewart: “[We] started the race 11th and our strategy was just to go to the front and if we could stay up toward the front, stay there. If not, if it got crowded or crazy we would go to the back and just feel it out. We dropped as far back as 22nd or 23rd, I think, and were able to work our way back up there and just kind of stayed up there all day. It really was an uneventful race from our standpoint. Every time there was trouble it was always behind us, which was a good thing. The guys on the pit crew had great stops all day. The cars I couldn’t pass they passed for me on the pit lane. Everybody was just kind of feeling each other out at the beginning of the race and then we all got in that line on the outside. That outside line got going and once it started everybody jumped up there and everybody just peeled around the top and were basically scared to pull out of line. It’s happened that way before and that’s, I think, is something the drivers are figuring out and unfortunately I think it’s making the racing more boring every time we go to Talladega. It’s not the racetrack’s fault. It’s not NASCAR’s fault. It’s not our fault as drivers. It just is what it is.”
On the race’s last 25 laps and the finish:
Stewart: “I feel like I let my team down. I don’t know what I should’ve done different but I should done something different obviously because we went, in the last three quarters of a lap, from third to eighth. Jeff Gordon said it best. I had a great run on the outside and all it took was him to just pull up there and there was nothing I can do. I’m treed at that point. So it’s either push him or get crashed trying to go to the inside by him or run into the guys down on the bottom. It’s not a very fun deal. I wish I could say I felt like that was racing. That doesn’t seem like racing to me when you’ve got three teammates that can get together and gang up like that and run to the bottom and know that they’re going to follow each other. And I was stuck up there. I had two teammates also in the race so it wasn’t like I didn’t have the same opportunity they had. The three of us never got together and could stay together. It’s a weird deal. I think the fans are going to be able to dictate what happens more than we are as drivers right now. I don’t think it really matters what we think. At the same time it’s kind of hard for NASCAR to figure out an easy solution. I don’t think there is an easy solution.”
Stewart: “The one thing about it, though, is at the end of the race it’s always exciting. Everything always gets jumbled up and it’s a toss-up of who is going to win the thing. I think we could just shorten the race to about 60 or 80 laps and cut all the crap in the middle where we’re all riding around absolutely bored out of our skulls and we could still put on a good show and everybody could get home earlier.”
Yocum: “Do you think they should shorten that race a little bit?”
Stewart: “I don’t see the point in 500 miles, not with the way the race went Sunday and with the way it was in the spring. Both races this year with two different forms of cars we had that same deal where we were all lined up on the outside. I don’t see the point of it being 500 miles. It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care. I get paid the same whether they shorten it or not and the trophy is still the same at the end of the race.”
On Saturday’s Bank of America 500:
Stewart: “I’m excited. The track has taken a while to season in but it keeps getting better and better and it seems like every year we keep making our cars better and better there, too. The good thing is it’s a night race. We don’t start late in the afternoon and go all the way into the evening. We actually get to start a little bit later. But it’s still a race where your cars pretty much slide around for the first 100 or 200 miles and then it gets dark enough and cool enough that the cars get really, really quick. I mean we really, really fly around there.”
Yocum: “Jimmie Johnson last year was just about 150 points out of first coming into this event a year ago and really went on a run. You’re 154 markers out of first. You look last at last year at the run you guys went on. Can you duplicate that even though we’ve got a couple of CoT races mixed in?”
Stewart: “We hope so. You look at the tracks that we have left. We’ve got Charlotte this weekend. We have Martinsville next weekend. And then we have Texas, Atlanta, Phoenix and Homestead. At Phoenix, with the CoT car, Jeff Gordon and I were the fastest two cars at the end of the race. Martinsville, we just went to Caraway [Speedway] to test today and work on our Martinsville program. So I think that is the last two CoT races that we have. The rest of them are all mile-and-a-half packages. I think we’ve got a good shot. Atlanta we’ve run really well, almost won the race in the spring, ran second to Jimmie Johnson. Texas we won in the fall last year. So we’ve got tracks coming up that we’re really, really good at. That gives us a lot of confidence going in to not only this weekend but the next five races after that.”
A new edition of “Tony Stewart Live” airs every Tuesday (8-10pm ET) exclusively on SIRIUS NASCAR Radio, channel 128.
Right on Tony :
Shorten the race and it will make it a lot more interesting.
I agree. Even a 400 miler can get boring, but I don’t think you could shorten it any more than that. 400 miles would change strategies as well which, in itself, would keep things interesting. And I’m sure the car owners themselves wouldn’t complain about 100 less miles. If it’s up to the fans (like Tony stated), then maybe NASCAR should throw it out to the fans to decide. My vote – a 400 miler.
Paul
The only reason that Tony is saying this is because he didnt win. He wanted to use the same strategy as alot of the other guys but he just had to much ADHD to do it. Nothing personel against smoke because he’s a heck of a driver but he cries just about as much as Jeffery does.
But yes I as a fan would be perectly happy with a 400 mile race, heck maybe even twin 200′s One Sunday morning and the other Sunday afternoon, That’ll really shake things up. It’ll get treated like 2 races points wise, but if you win both races you get an extra 25 points.
Stewart is telling it how it is because that race was terribly boring until the last couple laps of the race.
I agree; Dega WAS boring..I watched the first half and then went to work..
Even working at Hollister was more exciting than that race!!!! lol
If you say tony is crying im sure your favorite driver was too,everybody was complaining about it not just tony and hes right the race sucked.
BS
Yes I agree. It was pretty boring.
It was boring ’til the end, but just about every Speedway race has been since they took the sideways blades off of the roofs. With them back then you had so much passing it was just about as artificial as the past/present restrictor plate races were with clumps of cars and nobody really capable of driving past or going away. Sort of like a Champcar race with a Hanford wing. None of it, like Stewart said, seems like real racing to me.
Yet if they went back to how the Cup cars were pre-restrictor plate… you still had races where one car ran off and hid. Bill Elliott dominated at Daytona the one year, just about lapped the field. I don’t think NASCAR or the fans want to see that either. I’m not sure what the answer is, don’t think Smoke or NASCAR does either, but far as I can tell… something needs to be done. CoT or old car, the racing at the big Speedways is almost always a case of guys trying to make it to the last 25 laps to start dicing, you’re starting to see more and more racers pull the Dale Jarrett “Let’s float around at the tail ’til the end” mentality to try and take the win. I do believe shortening the race, going with Fisha’s suggestion of splitting the race up into separate points events, and/or adding incentives throughout these races could be the answer. I remember when Junior Johnson used to get on DW’s case back in the 80′s to go up and win the halfway bonus at just about every track, NASCAR even seemingly made it a point to hype up the halfway bonus and acknowledged when a racer won it and what exactly the bonus was. If there was more incentive to race from start to finish, the racing wouldn’t lull you to sleep for 70% of it like they do today. I think it could potentially improve the racing at other tracks throughout the schedule as well.
HEY FISHA, I AGREE WITH TONY , EVEN THOUGH I AM A DALE JR FAN , I SAY THIS IS THE MOST BORING SEASON OF NASCAR EVER. BRISTOL AND DEGA ARE SUPPOSE TO BE THE #1 RACES OF THE SEASON FOR NASCAR AND FOUND IT BORING THIS YEAR, I AM A DIEHARD RACE FAN AND I AM 44 YEARS OLD I HAVE BEEN WATCHING NASCAR SINCE I WAS A LITTLE GIRL I LOVED DAVY ALLISON HE WAS MY FAV AND EARNARDT SR, I REMEMBER EVERY SUNDAY WHEN I WOULD GO TO MY GRANDPARENTS HOUSE MY PAWPAW QOULD BE SITTING IN HIS RECLINER AND I WOULD SIT RIGHT BESIDE HIM TILL THE BEGINING TO THE END OF THE RACE, THAT WAS SOME OF THE BEST MEMORIES I EVER HAD. NOW THAT MY GRANDDAD PASSED ON IN 1995 I STILL CHERUSH THOSE MEMORIES. HE WAS THE REASON I GOT INTO NASCAR, NOTHING HAS BEEN THE SAME SINCE IT WAS CHANGED FROM WINSTON CUP TO NEXTEL AND THE DRIVER STARTED DRIVING DIFFRENT CARS AND RETIRING, IT REALLY WENT DOWN THE HILL WHEN EARNHARDT DIED HE KEPT THE RACE EXCITING. HE WAS THEY GUY YOU LOVE TO HATE.. I WILL ALWAYS BE A DIEHARD RACE FAN THATS ONLY CAUSE I CHEER FOR MY OLDER NASCAR GUYS AND JR AND TONY OF COURSE, TONY MIGHT BE A HATE KIND OF GUY BUT HE CAN DRIVE ANYTHING. I DO MISS RUSTY WALLACE. AND MARK MARTIN IS GREAT TOO. BUT NASCAR GOT TO DO SOMETHING TO MAKE IT BETTER NEXT SEASON THEN IT WAS THIS SEASON, ALOT OF PEOPLE WILL NOT WATCH ALL THE RACES THEY WILL BE FINDING SOMETHING ELSE TO GET INTO. DRAG RACING IS FUN THOUGH GREAT TO WATCH..
Racing today is NOT Racing. You cant beat, hit or touch another car without NASCAR yelling Foul. That is NOT Racing.
As for Taga and being Boring, if NASCAR let them race and gave them points for where they were running near the front and not the back. Those boys would be banging the walls to get up front. Give them something to race for. Points it seems to make the grade and Money. Make it a Heat Race, shorten the Race and set something on Fire to get them to Race and stop all the BS on the track and in the Pits. Let them talk, dang it and let them RACE NASCAR. You have Choked the Stock Car so much, and Drivers so much they Can’t Race. !!
It’s like watching Grandma driving to church on Sunday and even she Drives a Stock Car.
I HATE what NASCAR has done to the sport……… The only reason I watch any more is to see what Tony S will say or do. He seems to be the only driver with the balls to speak out againts NASCAR… And with that they try to chop him off at the knees!!!!!
The race and season have been boring and Nascar is too blame….