Tony Stewart’s championship hopes no longer bleak thanks to Sonoma win

If something sounds familiar about Tony Stewart returning from serious injury to score a surprising win Sunday at Sonoma Raceway and vault himself to the cusp of earning a once longshot Chase for the Sprint Cup playoff berth, there is a reason why.

Stewart’s triumph in many aspects mirrors last year’s victory by Kyle Busch, who like Stewart missed a considerable portion of the opening months of the season recuperating from devastating injuries to conquer the demanding California wine country road course.

In Stewart’s case, he suffered a burst fracture of his L1 vertebra incurred after crashing a dune buggy in January. Last year, Busch broke his right leg and left foot in an accident during the February Xfinity Series race at Daytona International Speedway. Stewart missed eight races, Busch 11, with both returning far sooner than expected.

“It was a really cool thing for Tony to be able to come back and get that win and obviously the same place Kyle did it last year, which is kind of ironic after he was hurt,” third-place finisher Joey Logano said. “I don’t know what the deal is with Sonoma.”

The 45-year-old Stewart, who is retiring at the end of the season, is hoping the parallels don’t end there.

Busch used his Sonoma victory as a launching pad of sorts, going on to win three of the next four races and ultimately the Sprint Cup championship. But while Stewart’s path to the Chase is now far clearer than it was prior to Sunday -- he’s a mere nine points from being ranked 30th in the standings, a requirement he must meet to qualify -- doubts remain whether he can replicate Busch’s performance over an extended period.

Before Sunday, Stewart had been immersed in a career-worst 84-race winless streak, struggling most weeks to find some semblance of competitiveness. More evidence that he was no longer the same driver who captured three Cup titles with a dazzling combination of talent and willpower was exhibited in the previous 76 races before Sonoma, where he recorded a meager three top-five finishes and led just 161 laps.

In the past three years, Stewart has not only broken his back but also his right leg in 2013 and endured personal tragedy when he accidentally took the life of another driver in 2014. When Busch returned last season he was 30 and entering his prime years, and he put forth the weekly consistency Stewart has lacked.

Those are significant differences.

And yet sports are filled with individuals who accomplished the seemingly impossible, as Stewart demonstrated himself in 2011. That season he was considered an afterthought when the Chase started, having gone winless during the regular season, at one juncture even saying he didn’t deserve to be in the playoffs because he and his Stewart-Haas Racing team flat stunk.

So it came with much wonderment when Stewart won the Chase opener, then followed by rolling off four more victories en route to the championship in a tiebreaker over Carl Edwards. It was a magnificent, indomitable playoff run that perfectly encapsulated Stewart, both as a driver and as a man.

Could Sonoma be the beginning of a second improbable, unexpected push toward another championship?

“Really cool to see Tony get that win here when it’s much needed,” Logano said. “It still shows he’s got what it takes if you give him the right stuff, and he’s going to push hard when he needs to.”

Although the results were uneven, Stewart saw reasons for optimism even before winning. In two races leading into Sonoma (Pocono and Michigan), he qualified exceptionally well (sixth and third, respectively) and ran into the top 10 in the latter. And because he missed eight races, Sunday was just Stewart’s eighth event working with first-year crew chief Mike Bugarewicz.

“It’s a scenario where you crawl before the walk, you walk before you jog, jog before you run, run before you sprint,” Stewart said. “It’s phases that we’re going through. I felt like Michigan and Pocono we got jogging, and we’re getting closer to being where we need to be.

“We’re not there yet, but we’ve still got time to get there, and we’ve gained a bunch of ground in a short amount of time. If we can keep making that ground and keep getting better, who knows?”

And as Stewart showed Sunday, it’s unwise to dismiss him even when the evidence suggests otherwise.

“Listening to people say I’m old and washed up, I know how old I am, I know I haven’t ran good for the last three years,” Stewart said. “But I’ve felt like if we got things right that it was still there.

“I don’t feel like I have to prove anything to myself.”