The Backstretch Blog: Smoke, he is a Bandit

March 12, 2012|By HEATHER WILLIAMS | Eyewitness Sports

Tony Stewart might just be the hottest driver in NASCAR right now. With his win Sunday in Las Vegas, he's won two races to start 2012 (if you count his duel victory), three of the last four and five of the last 10 races last season. So wait, let me take back that opening line and just say, Tony Stewart IS the hottest driver in NASCAR right now.

And how about this stat, the win in Vegas on Sunday, means Smoke has won on every active track on the NASCAR circut.

"That's a huge personal accomplishment for me," sais Stewart. "I take a lot of pride in being good in different types of cars, at least being competitive in different types of cars, being competitive at different racetracks. This is one we've been close a couple times and it got away."

What's equally as impressive is that Stewart has now done this, with two different crew chiefs, Darian Grubb last season, and Steve Addington this year.

"It still was a tough decision, like we talked about a million times now. It was a tough decision to leave with Darian," said Stewart. "From day one we told Steve that we had an awesome scenario at the end of the year, winning the championship. I guess it's easy for us to not feel that pressure from our side. You understand why the pressure -- that Steve puts the pressure on himself in that scenario. We told him from day one we're going to go have fun, race hard, take what it gives us"

"It's 's a big relief, to know you're the difference in the race team right now," said Addington. "I'm going to tell you, everybody has been awesome. Nobody put the pressure on me except myself."

But seriously, how long can this continue? Stewart is notorious for his slow starts to the NASCAR season, so with the 14 team having this much success, this early, you have to ask the question.

"The spring has historically not been our strong suit. You're 100% right on that," said Stewart. They're not going to move this Vegas race to the middle of the summer so we can win one. We had to figure out how to be good in the spring at some point."

Well if Smoke really has figured out how to be consistently good this early, every one else might be in trouble. But we are just three races in, so I'm not ready to give him a forth cup....yet.

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