FONTANA, Calif. — Tony Stewart was all smiles Sunday after his second straight eighth-place finish of 2009.
Stewart, who left his longtime home at Joe Gibbs Racing after last season to become co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing, said repeatedly before the season-opening Daytona 500 that he didn’t know what to expect from his new team.
So far, so good.
“I’m not really that good here,” Stewart said. “It tells you the car is better than I am probably. (But) I think we’re capable of doing it. I mean, we’ve done it two weeks in a row now.”
Stewart said that Sunday’s Auto Club 500 was a truer test of where the team is than at Daytona, where engine restrictors produce a whole different style of racing than at most of the other tracks where NASCAR’s Sprint Cup series competes.
“I was satisfied with the results of it,” Stewart said. “We seemed to go back and forth on catching up with (the car), so I was pretty happy with the communication today. The guys had really good pit stops. That last stop out there they got us out seventh and I couldn’t hold us up there. But, I felt like, team-wise we’ve been solid for two and a half weeks straight here now.”
BIF’S MISTAKE: Greg Biffle finished fourth on Sunday, but you would never have known it from the grim look on his face.
The Bif, a strong contender through much of the race, was running second to Jeff Gordon when he made a costly mistake on his last pit stop. He slid his No. 16 Ford across his own air hose as he entered his pit box and NASCAR immediately penalized Biffle, pushing him back to 12th place.
Biffle was a man on a mission after that, moving all the way to fourth before running out of laps.
“They should fire me,” he said immediately after getting out of his car. “That was a pretty fast car. I just screwed it up trying to get greedy.
“You know it was so hard to pass out here, and I was hoping to beat the 24 (Gordon) out and I was trying to give my guys every advantage I could. … We had this problem before. It’s just me stopping too deep in the box and caught them off guard and ran over the hose.
“They didn’t do anything wrong,” he added. “It was my fault.”
Biffle said he was knew he was going to have trouble sleeping Sunday night.
“I’m just sick to my stomach, man,” he said. “It almost brings tears to my eyes to know I let my guys down like I did.”
But it wasn’t all that bad a day for Biffle, who added Sunday’s top-five finish to a far more disappointing 20th-place finish in the Daytona 500. He was one of three Roush Fenway Racing entries to finish in the top 10, joining winner Matt Kenseth and seventh-place Carl Edwards. The other two team drivers, Jamie McMurray and David Ragan, finished 16th and 17th.
LEARNING CURVE: Joey Logano, the 18-year-old rookie who moved into Tony Stewart’s seat in the No. 20 Toyota at Joe Gibbs Racing, had another tough day of on-track education.
The youngster, who crashed and finished last at Daytona, stayed out of trouble Sunday, but finished a lap off the pace in 26th.
“I wish I learned half this stuff before we started racing,” he said. “I’m happy with this. I think we definitely needed this, for sure, just kind of get the season rolling, get everything going.
“We’re going to take it and improve from it and I feel a lot better.”
Scott Speed, the only other rookie in the race, had an engine failure and finished 41st.
CROWD NOISE: Despite the economic crunch that has hit California particularly hard and predictions of a disastrously small turnout Sunday, it appeared the grandstand that holds 105,000 spectators was more than half full.
Auto Club Speedway president Gillian Zucker was obviously pleased with the numbers.
“This says a lot about what Southern Californians feel about NASCAR,” she said as the cars zoomed around the nearby track. “I think there is not any kind of question about how hard this part of the country has been hit by the economy. … To see this kind of a crowd in this grandstand says a lot, I think a heck of a lot, about how we’ve promoted this event and how much people are beginning to care about this sport the same way with the same passion as they have in the Southeast.”
The track 60 miles east of Los Angeles has had trouble filling the stands since adding a second Cup date in 2004. But a swap with Atlanta Motor Speedway moved the second Auto Club Speedway race from Labor Day Weekend to October in 2009.
“We have a race now that’s at a great time of year for racing in California,” Zucker said. “We have a Chase race and I expect you’ll see these crowds continue to grow. But the doom and gloom about the fact that California can’t support NASCAR is dead wrong.”
WEATHER WISE: The first four of five caution flags in Sunday’s event were all brought out by light rain.
A year after heavy rains postponed the Cup race until Monday, the weather was just a nuisance, slowing down the proceedings for a total of 36 of the first 177 laps.
The cars continued to cruise around the 2-mile oval under each of the rain cautions until NASCAR deemed the track dry enough to wave the green flag again.
SPARK PLUGS: An engine failure sent Kevin Harvick into the wall on lap 208, ending his string of 81 consecutive races in which the Richard Childress Racing driver had been running at the end. He was 12th at the time. … Hendrick Motorsports teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin, who ran among the leaders most of the day, both wound up in the garage with engine problems. … Winner Matt Kenseth averaged 135.839 mph.
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