Stewart’s best start of ’16 leads to top 10 at Michigan – Nascar

RELATED: Results | Post-Michigan standings | Chase Grid | Day in photos

BROOKLYN, Mich. — It won’t silence all those “he needs to win” comments following Tony Stewart through his final season as a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver, but Sunday’s seventh-place finish was deemed a success just the same.

“We haven’t been running good enough to worry about just winning,” the co-owner/driver of the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet said on the grid after Sunday’s FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway.

“What we needed was a day like today … from Friday through right now we needed a solid weekend.”

Seventh might seem mundane given the fact that Stewart, 45, is a three-time series champion with 48 career victories. But those titles, won in 2002, ’05 and ’11, were the result of solid finishes as much as they were the result of wins. Stewart’s been around long enough, and won often enough, to know that.

Forced to sit out the season’s first eight races due to injury, Stewart and his team had struggled since his return, with only two finishes of 12th or better. To earn a berth in the season-ending, 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup, he needs to be either among the top 16 in points or inside the top 30 with a victory.

RELATED: Top 10 boosts Stewart’s Chase chances

Sunday’s top-10 inched him slightly ahead in the standings, to 35th. He trails 30th-place Brian Scott (Richard Petty Motorsports) by 45 points with 11 races remaining before the cutoff.

“Today it was a solid all day until we came out of the pits outside the top five the first time,” Stewart said. “When we were sixth before that last caution (which came with 10 laps remaining), we were catching Kevin (Harvick) and had a chance to race him back for the top five again.

“The last restart didn’t work out for us. We had two or three of them at the beginning (of the race) that didn’t work out and we had two or three there in the last half of the race that worked out. But the last one didn’t.

“That’s just kind of where we ended up. We had a solid day, and that’s what we wanted.”

After qualifying a season-best third on Friday, Stewart ran inside the top five for most of the first half of the 200-lap race on the 2-mile layout. He was 16th at the halfway mark, as most of the cars had begun cycling through a round of green-flag pit stops.

He quickly worked his way back inside the top 10, where he remained for the bulk of the final 100 laps.

What was behind what appeared to be an overnight turnaround in the team’s fortunes? Hard work by the boys back at the shop? NASCAR’s latest aerodynamic tweaks? Likely credit it to little of both.

“I don’t know. You have to remember, I just drive the car,” Stewart said.

“The thing is, you just want to come off the track close; you want to make good changes through the weekend. From the time we made the first run, every time we came in and made a change I could feel the change. The package here gives you that ability. You’re not just stuck. I’ll take what we’ve got.”

As for the aero changes, highlighted by a shorter spoiler?

“Love it. Absolutely love it,” he said. “The package is good. The areo package is starting to catch up now.”

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