2008 Season Review
Ford 400
Behind the Scenes
2008-11-20
Change, they say, is inevitable. If you aren't changing, you're falling behind.
In some cases that might be true, but not when it concerns The Home Depot Racing team.
In a somewhat tumultuous 2008 season, Home Depot and its long-time driver Tony Stewart once again made the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, contended for race victories from February to November and honed further the competitive image of the orange and white No. 20 Toyota Camry.
And then Stewart bid a fond farewell and left the team, Joe Gibbs Racing and The Home Depot to fulfill his destiny elsewhere.
"It's hard," said an emotional Stewart after climbing from the Big Orange racer for the last time at Homestead-Miami Speedway last Sunday.
"These guys are my family," he said. "When you've been with a group of guys for 10 years and the sponsor for 10 years like this... that's a long time. I know people that haven't been married that long. It's just one of those rough nights. We had a shot to win and it didn't work out for us."
Stewart fell 11 laps short of what would have been his 34th career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory at Homestead, the victim of fuel mileage in the race's latter stages. He led by more than four seconds when he hit pit road on lap 256, but had to rally to finish ninth.
"We did everything we could do," said Stewart, who in 10 career starts at Homestead has five top-10 finishes. "It was awesome to be leading there with 20 laps to go and driving away from the field. You can't ask for more than that. I just appreciate everything that Zippy (Greg Zipadelli, crew chief) and these guys have done."
What Stewart, Zipadelli and the rest of the Home Depot team have done over the past 10 seasons is extraordinary. They've combined to win 33 races, two Sprint Cup titles and 10 poles over 356 starts.
"We all wanted to win this last race, but so did 42 other guys that wanted to win this last one of the year," Stewart said. "I'm really proud of these guys. The biggest thing to me is that we went out and we were competitive tonight. Everybody knew we were here and they knew we were one of the fastest cars all day."
That's really been the story for the No. 20 Home Depot team, ever since it came together back in 1999.
Always in the mix for the victory and always flamboyant, Stewart drove the wheels off the car and won races for Home Depot. If he didn't win, he tried hard to finish second or third or as close to the front as he could humanly take it.
His philosophy, and Zipadelli's, was to go out and lead laps and win races and let the points take care of themselves. In his title seasons of 2002 and 2005, that's exactly what they did.
In 2008, the first year with Toyota, that same game plan was in effect, but it didn't pay off like it did three years earlier.
In 36 starts in 2008, Stewart and the No. 20 earned one victory at Talladega Superspeedway in October, which put paid to 10 years of suffering at the big Alabama track.
Home Depot had been the second-place car at Talladega on six occasions in its 20 starts there, and to get a victory in the final try was well worth the wait. It didn't come without controversy, however, as Regan Smith dived below the yellow out-of-bounds line coming to the checkered and was the first car to cross the finish line.
NASCAR ruled quickly in Stewart's favor, fortunately, and ended a streak of bad-luck finishes.
Home Depot should have, by rights, been in Victory Lane on several occasions in 2008, but something always seemed to get in the way.
There was the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte in May, where a tire went down less than three laps from the finish and caused Stewart to crash--with a six-second lead and nothing between him and the checkered.
There was the New Hampshire race where Stewart was dominant, leading 132 laps, before a rain shower ended the race 16 laps early. Zipadelli had the perfect strategy, and Stewart was sailing through the field after his final pit stop, only to finish 13th when the rains came.
Bristol in MArch was another place where No. 20 should have been at the top of the scoring tower when the race ended, as Stewart led 267 laps before being punted out of the way at the end of the race by good friend Kevin Harvick. He finished 14th.
At the end of the day, Stewart racked up 10 top-five and 16 top-10 finishes in his final season with Home Depot and JGR, earning more than $7 million in prize money and finishing ninth in the points.
It's been a long road together, and for the future, it's going to be a big adjustment for the team to have a new driver in the cockpit.
For now, it's a time to remember that Big Orange was never one of those teams that its rivals could count out, at any time or on any track. There was always the potential for Home Depot colors to be at the front of the pack, and in Victory Lane.
"It's been a quick 10 year, said tire specialist Jerold Shires, one of the team's orginal members. "It's sort of like my father said one time, as you get older, the years go by faster. These 10 years have really gone fast. Everybody on the team hates to see him go, but everybody wishes him good luck. He'll be our competitor next year because he won't be with us anymore, but we all still plan on being friends with him, and if we ever need something, I think he'll be able to step up and help us out."
As he leaves the only home he's ever known in NASCAR, Stewart took the time to compliment Home Depot.
"I just wanted to make it, let alone make it 10 years here," he said. "It makes me proud. It makes me very, very proud of both my relationship with everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing and The Home Depot. They've been a great company to work for and represent. It's been a lot of fun. We've been through a lot of highs and a lot of lows, but at the end of the day, we've had a lot of fun and we've won a lot of races and won two championships. I think we've had a very successful 10 years."
The Home Depot will continue wth Joe Gibbs Racing in 2009 and new driver Joey Logano will attempt to write more successful chapters in the company's tenure with NASCAR.
It will be strange indeed to see Logano's name painted on the door above the driver's compartment come Speedweeks in Daytona, but there are indeed mountains yet to climb for The Home Depot, Joe Gibbs Racing and Big Orange Nation.
Come February, there'll be a whole new feeling in the air, and all the hope and excitement that goes with it.
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