Indianapolis—Tony Stewart did not have a picture perfect weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but did rally for a 10th place finish in Sunday’s Crown Royal presents the Curtiss Shaver 400 at the Brickyard.
“We just didn’t start the weekend off good enough,” said Stewart. “I will say that I’m really proud of Steve Addington, Greg Zipadelli and all of our engineers and everybody who worked hard last night to make this car what it was today.”
“It was a lot better, but this is where we should have unloaded it instead of trying to be good for the race,” Stewart added. “We just gotta be better off the truck.”
Stewart said the team fought handling in the corner all day and were just too tight in the center of the corner.
“I was proud of the gains they made,” Stewart said. “It was a very inconsistent car yesterday, and it was a very consistent car today.”
Ryan Newman finished seventh giving Stewart-Haas Racing a pair of top-10 finishes.
“We finally got good track position there towards the end and we were able to keep it,” said Newman. “We just didn’t have quite the speed we needed to.”
“We kind of knew that in all the practice sessions but we didn’t screw it up we actually made it a little bit better and we’ll go on,” Newman added.
Stewart hold on to a spot in the top-10 in seventh, 79 points behind leader Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Newman continues to battle for a wild card Chase position in 14th position with one win.