Tony Stewart had to make a late move in order to claim victory last summer at Daytona International Speedway in the Coke Zero 400, and it seems that the three-time Sprint Cup champion wouldn’t be surprised if another one decides tonight’s battle at the “World Center of Racing.”
In the final lap of the 2012 race, Stewart powered past Matt Kenseth on the outside in Turn 2 and went on to take the checkered flag as a big wreck ensued farther back in the pack. In Stewart’s mind, the ability to pull off a move like that comes only after “a lot of trial and error.”
“Anybody that sits there and says they know exactly what to do at what time is pretty much lying to you,” said Stewart, who will start 13th in tonight’s race. “It’s guess work. A lot of it is just the right circumstances at the right time. You can do the right thing as a driver, but there is still 10 guys or 20 guys behind you that their scenario maybe different and may alter what your decision was.
“It’s very much – I call it ‘the Peyton Manning deal.’ You are constantly calling an audible in those last two or three laps. It may work [or] it may not work.”
Such is the completely unpredictable nature of restrictor-plate racing, but if anybody’s used to that – especially at Daytona – it’s Stewart. He’s won 19 times in his NASCAR career at Daytona, including four times in Sprint Cup (all in the Coke Zero 400) and seven times in the Nationwide Series. Needless to say, he’ll be a threat this evening under the lights.
However, it’s not yet known if, should he win, he’ll celebrate with a trend that he says he’s started: Soda cookies. He partakes of them in a recent Mobil 1 commercial while doing the splits, shocking his Formula One counterpart, Jenson Button.
On Friday at Daytona, he said that “some male gymnast” actually did the splits for him and that he had never tried soda cookies until the making of the ad.
“I can’t say that I have ever just sat down and grabbed a Coke and grabbed Oreos,” he said. “I’ve ate Oreos and then chased them with a Coke, but I can’t say that I have done a lot of dunking. It’s actually pretty good.”
