Stewart hopes road course cures own winless drought

[News Guy]

Driver expects ringers to be shut out of Victory Lane

He may be in the midst of a victory drought, but when the Sprint Cup Series heads to either of its two annual road-course events Tony Stewart immediately becomes a favorite to win.

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Stewart hasn't won in 29 races heading into Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway (3:30 p.m. ET, TNT). His last victory came in August at Watkins Glen -- his sixth road-course victory in 18 career starts.

He was one of the fastest on the track last year on the winding course in California Wine Country, but fuel mileage put Juan Montoya in the winner's circle. Stewart's sixth-place finish last year has him energized to score his third Sonoma victory.

"I look forward to the trip because we've had good luck there," Stewart said. "If you listen to Robby Gordon, he says he was the fastest car last year and we passed him and drove away from him in the race, so I guess he missed the orange car that went by him. We were the fastest car, no doubt. We just got bit on fuel mileage and that's part of it. We left there knowing that we had done our jobs and we had a fast racecar and we were bit by a circumstance that we couldn't control."

If Stewart doesn't claim the win, he fully expects one of the regular Sprint Cup drivers to deny the road-course specialists their chance at victory.

"You look at guys who have run really well on the road courses the last couple of years and it's Jeff Gordon, myself and Kevin Harvick," Stewart said. "There hasn't been a road-course ringer to win a race yet, so I don't know why everybody uses that in the equation other than it gives them something different to write about. You still have to beat the same guys that have been winning. The stats will tell you who you've got to beat there."

Of the six ringers entered -- Scott Pruett, Ron Fellows, Marcos Ambrose, Brian Simo, Max Papis and Boris Said -- Fellows has had the most NASCAR success. He has three career Sprint Cup top-five finishes, including two runner-up finishes at Watkins Glen. He's also won three Nationwide races and two Craftsman Truck races. He's no stranger to success at Infineon, either -- he's scored sports-car wins at the track from 2003 to 2005.

Fellows will take over for Regan Smith in the No. 01 DEI Chevy this week.

"I want to win a Cup race before I'm done," Fellows said. "We've had some good opportunities and the best opportunities I've had to win have been with DEI. There are some people at DEI who were there when we had a pretty dominant car in 2003-2004. The stars were not aligned, and that's exactly what it takes. You can have a fast car and a great crew, but the stars have got to be aligned."

Said has also had NASCAR success -- he won a Truck race at Infineon in 1998 -- but he's had a luckless 2008 season. He failed to qualify at Daytona in February, and he had a DNF at the Mexico City Nationwide race.

But in order to win Sunday, Said must first make the race.

"First, we need to qualify; for us Friday is the pressure-cooker," Said said. "The second goal is to be in the top 10 with 15 laps remaining. And the third goal is to do everything in my power to try and win the race."

"But as we've seen so many times, these road races come down to fuel mileage. I hope it doesn't become a fuel-mileage race because Infineon is a driver's track with the elevation changes and the blind corners. But if it comes down to which team can conserve the most fuel, we'll be ready for that. We worked on fuel mileage during our testing at Road Atlanta."