What a difference a year makes.
Last year at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Clint Bowyer was able to coast by Tony Stewart for victory as Stewart ran out of gas on the last corner of the last lap.
In perhaps the most ironic ending of the NASCAR season Sunday at New Hampshire Bowyer ran dry and Stewart raced by for the win.
After scoring his second win of the season, and his second in a row, Stewart has come from ninth in points and an almost after thought to first in the standings and the driver to beat for the 2011 title.
But Stewart is well aware of history and knows that no one has led the points after the second race in the Chase and gone on to win the title.
“The last four weeks have been awesome,” Stewart said. “We’ve got a tough hurdle ahead of us next week at Dover. We really struggled there and that’s the one race in the Chase that I’m worried about most. So this is the best scenario we can have going into it. Our guys are pumped up and I am proud of Darian (Grubb, crew chief) and these guys. They never give up. So we are going to keep digging for these next eight weeks.”
Stewart’s biggest challenger could be the driver who has been the most surprising this season. Brad Keselowski entered the Chase as a Wild Card having scored three wins but after finishes of fifth at Chicagoland last Monday and a second place Sunday at New Hampshire, Keselowski finds himself third in the standings only 11 points out of first.
Keselowski was happy to finish second not only at a track he’s struggled at but considering he was outside the top 20 at the midpoint of the race it was a finish that was somewhat unexpected.
“We made some good adjustments with about 120, 130 to go, and it drove up into fourth, which I was really proud of our team for that,” Keselowski said. “Still played a little strategy, used the fuel stuff to get up to second but we were a legitimate top-10 car, not quite a second-place car. But proud of the effort, proud of how we took a track we were weak at and got a finish at it and that’s what this Chase is all about.”
What the Chase has been about after two races is Stewart and Keselowski who have shown that they could be the drivers to beat.
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