
Jenna fryer tony steward fued driver#
Chris Buescher is the only driver below him in the standings, and Stewart might just need to win at Dover to advance to the second round. Instead, he opened the playoffs with a 16th-place finish at Chicago and he was 23rd on Sunday at New Hampshire. He's retiring at the end of this season, and all his fans wanted to see a solid run toward a fourth NASCAR title. Stewart is in the bottom four of the Chase standings and will be eliminated Sunday at Dover International Speedway if he doesn't pull off some sort of miracle before the field is trimmed from 16 to 12 drivers. The driver went into NASCAR's playoffs with a roar and is on the verge of exiting with a whimper. Well, this isn't the way anyone wanted to see Tony Stewart end his career. How long the harmony lasts remains to be seen.CHARLOTTE, N.C. Perhaps that's the message Gibbs sent after escorting Stewart into a meeting with Hamlin that caused both to miss 30 minutes of valuable practice time on Saturday. "But there's a point where being a leader doesn't make you right." He's the guy who really, when I need help, I'll still go to regardless. "He's still the leader at Joe Gibbs Racing, without a doubt. "Even if it was a situation where I had wrecked him from behind, he still probably shouldn't have thrown me under the bus as far as he did," Hamlin said. That explanation was ridiculed by rival drivers, and didn't sit well with Hamlin. Stewart immediately blamed Hamlin for the accident, claiming the lead driver slowed in front of him. The two were running first and second in the early part of the Pepsi 400 at Daytona a week ago when Stewart ran into the back of Hamlin, causing both cars to crash into the wall. Most of it self-inflicted, including this spat with Hamlin. "Of course, with Tony there's always a lot of chaos going on."

"You know, there is something to be said for that," team president J.D. Sunday's win at Chicagoland Speedway proved that Stewart does his best work during the most chaotic times. His resume is checkered with wins that came during controversy, such as the Watkins Glen victory in 2002, which came a week after Stewart punched a photographer, and Chicago in 2004 after he wrecked Kasey Kahne, which led to a fight in the pits between their crews. When the going gets tough, nobody is better than Stewart at ending a controversy by stepping up on the race track. A power-play of sorts.īut when it was over, Stewart took to the track to prove he's still the star of that team.īy driving his way into Victory Lane for the first time this season, and doing it a day after being chastised by Gibbs, Stewart again showed his remarkable ability to thrive during adversity.

The public sniping forced team owner Joe Gibbs to interrupt his vacation and make a pit stop in Chicago, where he gave a 30-minute lecture on playing well with others to his top two drivers. After all, the budding young star is the future of Joe Gibbs Racing and probably believes he's above being bullied. When Denny Hamlin refused to quietly take teammate Tony Stewart's criticism, it marked a rare occasion of a young driver not rolling over for the two-timeĪnd sending word through the media that he didn't appreciate being publicly blamed for their accident in Daytona showed that Hamlin has the confidence - or ego - to go toe-to-toe with his teammate.
