Tony Stewart sure had a lot of fun for a driver who missed out on the top 10.
Stewart made his first start of 2016 on Sunday and cracked the top 20 over the final run of the race with a car that, frankly, could have finished in the top 15 if not the top 10. Instead, he finished 19th after getting back on the lead lap during the race's next-to-last caution period of the day.
"This place is so cool anyway," Stewart said. "It’s always been my favorite race track. Like we predicted, a day race we’d be all over the race track. That’s what made it fun. The drivers got to dictate it today as far as – You weren’t just stuck in one line. You had the ability to move around and change lines. We got in a spot there with a group of five cars racing for position once and it was fun because the five of us totally ran the track totally different."
Stewart had missed the first eight races of the season after suffering a fractured vertebra in a dune buggy accident in late January. He announced he was cleared to return to competition by doctors on Thursday.
The three-time champion had a competitive car, but was put a lap down early as the first half of the race went largely caution free. And then as the caution flags bunched up at the end of the race for debris and a couple of spins, Stewart was always seemingly one spot away from getting his lap back as the first car one lap down.
"I got a lap down and almost drove back by and got my lap back," Stewart said. But Carl was strong. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hang on long, but I was going to hold on as long as I could and hope we got a caution. It just seemed like we would get really close to being able to get that Lucky Dog spot back, and something would happen and we’d miss it by one. So, magic cautions coming out at wrong times for us, but it was fun."
OK, so he didn't have fun the entire race. The not fun part probably includes the caution that came out for Stewart himself. He had a left-rear tire go flat on lap 269 after contact with Joey Logano. The flat tire put Stewart at the back end of the field and he finally got the Lucky Dog to rejoin the lead lap on lap 327 when a caution came out for a spin.
"There were some things I didn't miss," Stewart said. "Say two-thirds I missed a lot. The thing I missed was driving a race car. That was fun. All the other stuff that happens and the circumstances that happen, I don't miss that part of it. I missed driving this race car."
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