To Drive or Not To Drive?

By Mark Young

If you haven't heard about Tony Stewart and his broken shoulder blade you have either been on vacation where there is no TV or Internet or you haven't been paying attention.  Lowe's Motor Speedway was not kind to Smoke as he crashed twice in two days and is now on the slow road to recovery.  This weekend he has Ricky Rudd on hand as relief driver at the Monster Mile in Dover but will Tony's pride get the best of him and not take advantage of Ricky's services?

Whether you like him or not, Tony Stewart is one of the best drivers this generation has ever seen and if he can drive a Daytona Prototype with only three wheels one would think he could surely drive with only one wing.  This might very well be the case if we were in the middle of the Chase for the Cup and he was a contender for the title, but this isn't even half way through the season.  Everyone knows that Smoke is a hard-head and letting someone else drive a car with his name painted over the window net is like letting your best friend kiss your girlfriend. 

Undoubtedly Tony has been seeing the medical gurus that the Gibbs' have brought in and they have been working on making him as comfortable as possible in the car.  He will surely have one of those electrical gizmos that can be dialed-up to ease the pain level in his shoulder as well.  I am of the opinion that regardless of how well the car is running when the first caution flag flies on Sunday Tony should get out of the car and let Ricky finish the race and the biggest reason for this is the track.  If you are unfamiliar with Dover the straight-aways are banked more than many of the corners on some tracks.  If you crash into the outside wall I can guarantee you that the car will also end up hitting the inside wall and with the speeds they carry there the impact will be hard, SAFER barriers or not.

Tony should be looking at the big picture here and try to get healed up as much as he can before the Chase.  That car runs well and with a driver like Ricky Rudd in your corner you can rest assured that he knows what he is doing.