Stewart on Roll Going Into New Hampshire

Tony Stewart figures he has the rest of the NASCAR Nextel Cup races right where he wants them now.

After an inconsistent and sometimes frustrating start to the season, Stewart suddenly finds himself the hottest driver in the series going into today’s New England 300 at New Hampshire International Speedway.

His last four starts have produced finishes of second, first, first and fifth -- four of his seven top-five finishes and both of his victories in 2005.

The last of those top fives was particularly impressive, with Stewart crashing in practice, starting a backup car from the rear of the field and charging into contention before the halfway point of the race last Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway.

Worse yet for the rest of the Cup competitors, Stewart’s resume shows he is a “second-half driver,” with the majority of his 21 career victories coming on the back end of the schedule.

He will drive onto the 1.058-mile New Hampshire oval third in points -- the best position for the 2002 Cup champion with 18 races to go in his seven-year career.

Stewart trails series leader Jimmie Johnson by 151 points and Greg Biffle by 43.

“We’re at that point of the season where the tracks are getting hot and slippery, and that’s what we like,” Stewart said. “When guys can’t hold it wide open and they can’t sit there on high-grip tracks and they actually have to drive these things, that’s when we start getting fast.”

New Hampshire has been a good track for Stewart in the past, with one win, six top-fives and seven top-10s in 12 starts. He also won an Indy Racing League event there in 1998.

There will be an added bit of drama this weekend, with the New Hampshire track one of several on the Cup schedule this year at which the cars practiced Friday, qualified Saturday and then are impounded by NASCAR until just before the start of the race.

With only limited adjustments allowed when the teams get the cars back -- an effort to keep them from spending money on special qualifying parts and pieces -- a compromise between the qualifying and race setup is a must.

“If anything, I’ve always thought this year when we had the impound races that it was a better deal,” Stewart said. “The old format, we always used to spend two hours in practice to run two laps [of qualifying], and then we switched the cars over and we got an hour and 45 minutes of practice to prepare ourselves to run 300 laps.”

New Hampshire is a difficult racetrack, so the impound rule might have some drivers spooked before they race.

“It certainly doesn’t help if someone has a bad attitude going in there,” Stewart said. “It kind of puts a strike against you, but I’m not going to say that you’re already beat. There are tracks that I’ve been to that weren’t my favorite tracks, but I still found a way to win there. You’ve just got to stay focused and work hard to find what it takes to be good.”

Right now, it doesn’t seem to take much for Stewart to be good on any track.

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NASCAR’s television ratings have generally been going up at every event this year, and the Pepsi 400 was no exception two weeks ago in Daytona. It was a strong debut for NBC, which took over the Nextel Cup broadcasts from Fox for the second half of the season.

Despite a nearly three-hour rain delay at the start and finishing after 10 p.m. PDT, the Saturday night race was listed as the ninth most-watched TV show of the entire week.

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Kevin Harvick is one driver who desperately needs a strong showing at New Hampshire.

Four weeks ago, the Richard Childress Racing driver was seventh in points, a strong contender for NASCAR’s season-ending Chase for the Nextel Cup championship. But since finishing eighth at Pocono on June 12, things haven’t gone well for Harvick.

Consecutive finishes of 25th, 37th, 24th and 19th have dropped Harvick to 14th, 120 points out of 10th place and 496 behind series leader Jimmie Johnson. There are just eight races remaining to qualify for the Chase, which will include the top 10 and any driver within 400 points of the leader after 26 races.

On the road course in Sonoma, Calif., he was racing for a top-10 finish when he dropped a cylinder with 25 laps to go. At Daytona, a top-five finish was in sight when he was turned around and wrecked by Carl Edwards in the final 30 laps.

Then, last Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway, Harvick was running fourth with 35 laps to go when he was forced to pit because of a tire vibration.