Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevrolet, is the 2011 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (NSCS) champion following a thrilling victory in the season-ending Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Stewart took his fourth and final lead of the race with 36 laps remaining and finished a little more than one second ahead Carl Edwards. Stewart won a points tie-breaker with Edwards, five victories to one, overcoming a three-point deficit in the finale’.
After going winless in the first 26 races of the season, Stewart won the first two races of the Chase, at Chicago and New Hampshire, and later added back-to-back victories at Martinsville and Texas before closing the season with the win at Homestead.
Stewart, who previously won titles in 2002 and 2005, becomes the eighth driver in series history to win three championships. Chevrolet now has won 28 driver’s championships, including each of the last seven. Stewart started the streak in 2005, and Jimmie Johnson won an unprecedented five in a row from 2006-2010.
Buck Baker won Chevrolet’s first driver’s championship in 1957.
Tonight’s victory was the 44th NSCS win for Stewart. He led four times for a total of 65 of the 267-lap race that was delayed by rain three times. Fighting back from adversity that sent him to the back of the field twice as a result of repairs made on pit road by the Darian Grubb-led crew, Stewart passed 118 cars on the way to Victory Lane and the Championship.
“After the way those first 109 laps went today, said Stewart from Victory Lane. “I could not be more proud. We had the problem early and had the hole in the nose, everybody on this Office Depot/Mobil 1 Chevy team did a great job of getting it back going, then we had the contact with (David) Reutimann and had to come back in and fix it again. I told them “Man, it is really going to make these guys mad when we come back twice and still kick their butt”. It was optimism and trying to keep the guys pumped up and then to come out here and actually do it, is awesome. “We just fought.
This Office Depot/Mobil 1 team is just incredible,” said Darian Grubb, Stewart’s crew chief. “We just didn’t give up. We kept fighting. We went out and earned this championship and showed we’re true champions.”
FIN CAR DRIVER MAKE 1 14 Tony Stewart Chevrolet 2 99 Carl Edwards Ford 3 56 Martin Truex Jr. Toyota 4 17 Matt Kenseth Ford 5 24 Jeff Gordon Chevrolet 6 33 Clint Bowyer Chevrolet 7 4 Kasey Kahne Toyota 8 29 Kevin Harvick Chevrolet 9 11 Denny Hamlin Toyota 10 31 Jeff Burton Chevrolet 11 88 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Chevrolet 12 39 Ryan Newman Chevrolet 13 78 Regan Smith Chevrolet 14 1 Jamie McMurray Chevrolet 15 43 A.J. Allmendinger Ford 16 27 Paul Menard Chevrolet 17 83 Brian Vickers Toyota 18 0 David Reutimann Toyota 19 20 Joey Logano Toyota 20 2 Brad Keselowski Dodge 21 71 Mike Bliss Ford 22 38 Travis Kvapil Ford 23 18 Kyle Busch Toyota 24 5 Mark Martin Chevrolet 25 21 Trevor Bayne Ford 26 13 Casey Mears Toyota 27 47 Bobby Labonte Toyota 28 135 Dave Blaney Chevrolet 29 32 T.J. Bell * Ford 30 36 Geoffrey Bodine Chevrolet 31 42 Juan Montoya Chevrolet 32 48 Jimmie Johnson Chevrolet 33 34 David Gilliland Ford 34 22 Kurt Busch Dodge 35 16 Greg Biffle Ford 36 51 Landon Cassill Chevrolet 37 84 Cole Whitt Toyota 38 6 David Ragan Ford 39 9 Marcos Ambrose Ford 40 87 Joe Nemechek Toyota 41 55 J.J. Yeley Ford 42 30 David Stremme Chevrolet 43 66 Michael McDowell Toyota
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