LONG POND – Tony Stewart was one of many victims who ran out of fuel in the closing laps of Sunday’s Windows 10 400 at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway.
Fortunately for Stewart, he coasted to the start-finish line, but not before delivering just his second top-10 finish of the season.
All around, it was a positive weekend for the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing team. Stewart showed strength and speed in the first practice session Friday afternoon and carried into qualifying later in the day with a fifth place starting spot.
While Stewart wasn’t a factor for the win in the race, Stewart played the strategy card well, making their first top-10 finish since a sixth at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway in April.
“We struggled the first part of the race but we got better that last third, for sure. I think we’re starting to kind of get a read on this thing a little bit,” Stewart told Motorsport.com after Sunday’s race.
“I’m not going to say after two weeks that we’ve got it figured out. That would be very premature but at least this weekend we got going a lot better than we had been. I’m hopeful the rest of it will start to come around a little bit.”
Stewart felt that Pocono was one of the best outing this season by his No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing team. Last weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the three-time Cup champion had speed early in the weekend and through qualifying, but finished a disappointing 28th after starting a season-best fourth.
“When we get in the back (of the field), you generally can’t do anything. But we got ourselves in position at the end there and we were passing cars all the way to the end,” he said.
“I felt really good about the car at the end of the race and that’s been our weakness all year. We’ll be OK at the beginning of the race and everybody else gets better and we can’t seem to get better.”
Next weekend, the Cup Series returns to Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International for the final road course race of the season. For Stewart, it’s bound to be emotional.
While Stewart is a five-time winner, most recently in 2009 at the upstate New York course, he sat out last year’s race after a sprint car driven by Stewart struck and killed Kevin Ward Jr. at Canandaigua Motorsports Park. Ward was walking onto a hot track under caution after colliding with Stewart during the race.
“At least this is some momentum,” Stewart told Motorsport.com. “Things haven’t gone very good there the last couple years but hopefully we’ll get going. It’s definitely one of the races I’ve circled on the calendar, for sure.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
