JGR PETITIONS NASCAR FOR CHANGES TO CUP SCHEDULE

NEW SCHEDULE WOULD HAVE MORE RACES IN SUMMER MONTHS

Huntersville- Ah, spring, and all around the NASCAR garage one hears the sounds of air tools, engines racing, and reporters asking "What's wrong with Tony Stewart?" and "When will Tony Stewart win a race?"  Six weeks into the 2008 Sprint Cup season and questions abound about Stewart's absence from Victory Lane so far this season- especially since his teammates Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin have already recorded wins.  Granted, Stewart has two victories in the Nationwide Series this season, but so far, a Cup victory has eluded the two-time Sprint Cup champion.

J. D. Gibbs, president of Joe Gibbs Racing- which owns Stewart's #20 Home Depot Camry- met with reporters  at  the team's headquarters to discuss Stewart's 2008 season to date.

"Every year it's the same old thing with the media- what's wrong with Tony and why hasn't he won a race.  The guy has 3 top fives and 4 top tens so far, and some of you are ready to write him off for the rest of the season.  You know as well as I do that this team doesn't really get going until the summer.  I don't know why- that's just the way it is.  We've tried to convince Tony that it's summer in the middle of winter.  We put special lights in the shop and in the hauler to simulate the summer heat.  Zippy (Stewart's crew chief Greg Zipadelli) put calendars up all over the place that said July when in reality it was February. It didn't work.  There's just something inside Tony that responds to summer heat.  If we could run more races in the summer, this wouldn't be an issue."

To that end, Gibbs has asked NASCAR to make significant changes to the NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule beginning with the 2009 season..  If approved, the new schedule would be a vast departure from NASCAR tradition. 

The new schedule would have the Daytona 500 run as always on the 3rd Sunday in February.  From the 4th Sunday in February through the 1st Sunday in May, races would be run at tracks located in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia; Bogota, Colombia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janiero, Brazil; and other Southern Hemisphere cities.  The series would return stateside beginning with the Mother's Day weekend races at Darlington.

J. D. Gibbs is confident that these changes to the schedule will put an end to Stewart's customary slow start to the Cup season.  "If summer can't come early to NASCAR, then NASCAR can go where it's summer."

In a related story, Speedway Motorsports Inc. CEO Bruton Smith announced today that he has sent developers to Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia to scout locations for new tracks.