Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog
Tony Stewart is not too happy finishing 7th at Lowes on Saturday. He figures he had a top 3 car for sure, so what happened? In Tony’s eyes Paul Menard happened, that’s what.
You see, as Tony was leaving the pits after a “gas’n go” Paul was pulling into his pit stall just in front of the 20 pit stall. The two cars touched, but damage was minimal. Paul then sat there for a second and Tony hit the gas, pulled out in front of Menard and hit Kasey Kahne in the side, nearly spinning Kahne sideways into his pit stall and caused a whole lot of damage to the right side of the nose piece on his own car.
Now granted, after everything was said and done and Menard’s and Stewart’s crews were jawing at each other it got a little out of hand. When Stewart came back in for repairs to his car the next time by the Menard crew all stood there at their pit stall wall and cheered and clapped at Stewart and his crew. Why? Don’t know, but I’m quite sure in my own personal opinion the 15 crew were ticked off at getting blamed for the original collision and the one that immediately followed and they applauded Tony on his ‘great’ driving ability. Sarcasm at its best folks.
I actually like Tony Stewart and have defended him on occasion, but in this case he and his crew are wrong and are looking for a scape-goat for their mistakes. Who was watching Tony’s back? Where was his spotter, or crew chief when Menard was coming in? Menard does not know that Tony is going to pull out. The last time I heard anything it is sort of the unwritten rule that the car coming in has the right of way.
Anyway, the contact with Menard was minimal, it was the contact with Kahne that did Tony in. Where was his crew then? They were all yelling on the radio complaining about Menard when they should have been watching out for Tony as he was pulling out blindly into traffic.
If Tony should be upset at anyone it should be his crew and not Menard.
Just because he and 11 others are in the Chase does not mean that the rest of the field should lay down for them. The last time I checked there were 43 cars entered in the race all trying to win, not to try and stay out of the way of the ‘chosen ones’ in the Chase. If NASCAR wanted the Chasers to compete between themselves without the interference of non-Chase contenders then they would have created a 12 car 10 race format, but they didn’t.
Mental break down on the team and nothing else Tony, so stop blaming others, suck it up, and go win the Championship already!
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Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR
