Stewart Continues His Tear

After a poor start to the season, Tony Stewart is a title contender.

Following his seventh-place run last Sunday in Dover, Stewart stands fourth in the Winston Cup points and is just 158 behind leader Dale Jarrett as the series moves to Michigan International Speedway for the Kmart 400 on Sunday.

Stewart, in his third full season on the stock car circuit, has compiled finishes averaging fourth in his last six races.

Now NASCAR’s top series is heading into a stretch of eight races in June and July, and Stewart won three of those events in 2000, when he led the series with six victories. When he didn’t win, he finished well, recording six top-10 finishes before August.

He moved from 10th in the points to fifth during that stretch.

“The next two months is really important, especially considering that this stretch of races is where we seem to run really well,” Stewart said. “We know the tracks where we run well and we need to capitalize on those places and hopefully gain all the points we can, because later in the season there are a couple of tracks where we typically don’t run well.”

Stewart is hoping that Sunday doesn’t come down to a fuel mileage race -- which is typical at Michigan.

“I guess it’s just a characteristic of that kind of track,” he said. “I haven’t really been around long enough to know for sure, but it just seems like that’s the magic word there -- fuel economy. You try to do everything you can to make the engine run as efficiently as possible all day.”

NO RAIN DANCE: Nobody could blame Jeremy Mayfield if he does a little dance to try to keep away the rain for Sunday’s race at Michigan International Speedway.

A year ago, Mayfield led the most laps and was pulling away from the field when a rain shower brought out a red flag after 156 of 200 laps.

The long cool-down apparently led to engine problems after the restart and Mayfield, who finished 12th in the August race on the 2-mile, high-banked Michigan oval, was back in the garage 20 laps later, thinking about what might have been.

“Just about everybody saw how dominant a car we had in this race a year ago,” Mayfield said. “We were good, really good. A lot of people said it reminded them of the car Dale Jarrett had at Michigan a couple of years ago, when he dominated the race and pulled away all day long.”

That victory by Jarrett in the June 1999 race was even more one-sided because there were no caution flags.

“There usually aren’t a lot of cautions at Michigan, and that can lead to even bigger leads for a dominant car,” Mayfield said. “It’s tough to make adjustments when you’re under green. You have to make them mostly with tire pressures, maybe take a shot at a little wedge or something, but you don’t have a lot of time.

“You just can’t afford to give up anything in the pits, at Michigan or any other track.”

TOUGH COMPETITION: Three-time Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon has been nominated for a GQ Men of the Year award in the “Sports, Individual Athlete” category.

Other nominees in that category include tennis’ Andre Agassi, cycling’s Lance Armstrong, Supercross champion Ricky Carmichael and golf’s Phil Mickelson.

TWO FOR ONE: Las Vegas Motor Speedway is trying to prove it is really fan friendly.

The track has set the starting time for its NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race on Oct. 14 for 3 p.m. PST, in order to allow anyone who wants to watch the Winston Cup race from Martinsville, Va., on television plenty of time to do so.

The Martinsville race is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Las Vegas time.