It was a very good first year in 2009 for Tony Stewart and Stewart Haas Racing. 2010 though was at times a struggle and there were a few high points in a season with a lot of expectation in January.
He started off the season with a 22nd place finish at Daytona but then in three of the next four finishes he logged top 10 finishes.
Stewart was sitting fifth in the standings and looking strong early in the season. The next six races were not very good for Stewart.
An accident at Texas Motor Speedway and no finishes better than 16th saw Stewart fall to 18th in the standings.
It wasn’t just accidents and poor luck hampering this team; they were struggling with speed and getting a handling on the car.
It was pit road struggles and slow stops that cost them valuable positions on track.
Stewart and his team were searching for not only wins but the missing piece for their team.
Following his 23rd place finish at Darlington, Stewart and his team began to get back into form with a string of top 10 and top five finishes.
He finished second at New Hampshire and began to climb back into the Chase hunt moving to ninth in the standings.
Stewart though was still searching and still no comfortable in the car even though the cars were running better. He acknowledged that his guys back at the shop were making gains. "It's not just one thing. It's a lot of little things here and there. The engine department, they keep making gains. Our chassis are getting better."
Summer is usually when Stewart heats up and starts collecting wins and making his Chase run. Following a 25th place finish at Daytona in July, Stewart had a streak of five top 10 finishes in a row.
He collected his first win of the season at Atlanta Motor Speedway and made the Chase. He was ranked sixth in the standings.
At New Hampshire he and his team gambled on fuel but on the final lap ran out and while Clint Bowyer was celebrating a win, Stewart and his team found themselves in a hole just one race into the Chase.
His second race of the Chase didn’t go very well with a 24th place finish but a fourth place finish at Kansas and a win at California saw Stewart rising to fifth in the standings.
That was the highlight of the Chase for Stewart and his team as in the next five races they didn’t finish better than 11th and three finishes of 20th or worse.
This was a microcosm of his season, strong string of runs but then poor finishes follow up. Stewart finished off the year with an eighth place finish at Homestead and seventh in the standings.
In 2010, Stewart had two wins, nine top fives and 17 top 10’s. He led 537 laps and spent 63 percent of the laps in the top 15.
He ranked fifth in average running position of 12.3. He ran 88 percent of the laps run in 2010 on the lead lap.
As I looked back at the season the inconsistency cost Stewart a real chance at the title. It wasn’t bad luck but struggles on pit road and the struggles to find speed.
Stewart summed it up best on his early season struggles and their mid season turnaround.
"We were struggling," he later said in a massive understatement. "We were confused. We thought some of what we learned the first year would carry over, but there are no guarantees in racing. Technology changes. Things change. We were missing on something, but we were confident that we'd find it."
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