Three-time champ Tony Stewart off to the worst start of his Sprint Cup career
There is little doubt the start of the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series has not gone according to plan for three-time series champion Tony Stewart.
Despite high hopes entering the season, Stewart has failed to finish higher than 30th through the first four races of the year, and has yet to finish on the lead lap.
That trend continued during Sunday's CampingWorld.com 500 at Phoenix International Raceway, where Stewart was involved in two separate incidents, recorded his second DNF of the season and ended the day behind the wall in 39th.
Stewart's off-track drama and distractions have been well documented over the past two seasons, but do they continue to play a role in his on-track performance?
After a severely broken leg ended his 2013 season prematurely, Stewart recorded two top-fives and five top 10s in the opening months of the 2014 season. However, in August 2014, Stewart was involved in another sprint car incident, which cost the life of 20-year-old Kevin Ward Jr.
Since that tragic incident, and the legal drama that unfolded and ultimately passed, Stewart has just one top-10 finish, a fourth at Martinsville Speedway in October 2014.
Heading into this season, Stewart was optimistic and did not seemed concerned about the past or NASCAR's new rules package, which many say make the Sprint Cup cars race similar to the XFINITY Series cars.
"I have no idea if it's going to feel better or worse," Stewart said of the new rules package during the pre-season Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour in January. "But you know what? I go back to all the years we've raced so many different types of cars. You were always having to adapt to it, anyways. So I don't think this is going to be any different than what we've done in the past. It's just a matter of finding out that feel that we want in the car right away."
Yet four races into the season and Stewart is still trying to figure out that feel. He was vocal over the radio last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway about his feeling over the new package, and Sunday's performance in Phoenix showed little signs of improvement.
While his teammate Kevin Harvick is dominant early and Kurt Busch was impressive in his first start back in the Sprint Cup Series this weekend, Stewart is mired 36th in driver points, the deepest of any driver that has competed in all four events. Brett Moffitt, Michael McDowell, Busch, Alex Bowman, and Brian Vickers are all ahead of Stewart in the standings, even though each has missed at least one race this season.
Typically a slow starter, Stewart has been known to come on strong during the summer months, late in the season and into the Chase. However, he has never had such a poor start to a season.
In fact, this four-race stretch is statistically the worst of Stewart's 17-year Sprint Cup Series career. Never before has the three-time champion had four consecutive finishes worse than his performances of 42nd (Daytona), 30th (Atlanta), 33rd (Las Vegas) and 39th (Phoenix), none of which were on the lead lap.
The worst stretch Stewart had before this current one was 12 years ago in 2003, when he finished 41st at Auto Club Speedway, 41st at Richmond International Raceway, and 40th at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Still, that season he was able to score two victories and finish seventh in the overall season standings.
Chasing his first victory since June 2013 at Dover, Stewart is in a precarious place headed into the fifth race of the 2015 season.
Whether it is simply trying to become better acclimated with the new rules package or lingering affects from the two sprint car incidents in 2013 and 2014, Stewart is struggling to keep up with the competition on the track in 2015.
However, with this Chase format in place for the second year, the former champion still has time to turn things around and find away into the 16-driver field that will determine the title at the end of the season. But first, he has to find a way to finish on the lead lap, climb his way back into the top 30 in points and contend for wins.
