No Waiting Around For Stewart This Time

Smoke’s smokin’ – and the calendar has just flipped over to spring.

Rarely a fast starter, Tony Stewart is the 2012 season’s first double winner following his victory in Sunday’s weather-shortened Auto Club 400 in Southern California.

In his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series career, Stewart never had won multiple races before May. Only six of the three-time champion’s 46 wins – this year’s included – have come prior to June. He climbed into a tie for 14th on the all-time series win list with 1956-57 champion Buck Baker.

All of which spells worry for Stewart-Haas Racing’s driver/owner. Stewart climbed to fourth in the standings after winning in Fontana for the second time.

Just as Jimmie Johnson kept rolling after four of his five consecutive championships, Stewart is maintaining the momentum of his record Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup™ performance. He’s won seven of his most recent 15 starts.

The last driver to go seven-for-15 over the end of one season and beginning of another was Jimmie Johnson. He did in 2009-10.

Stewart didn’t just stand pat bringing aboard new director of competition Greg Zipadelli and crew chief Steve Addington.

“It’s easy for teams, when they have success, to kind of slow down a little bit, take a breath, feel like they’re exactly where they need to be,” said Stewart following his most recent win. “That’s probably the one thing I was most excited about through this winter, was watching our guys, listening to their comments about how excited they were to have the success we had, but how they were looking forward to next year and trying to be able to duplicate that.”