Usually when things don’t go Tony Stewart’s way, he gets irritable and cranky.
But after his latest disappointment in the Daytona 500, Stewart was downright despondent.
Stewart’s Toyota Camry was in the lead on the white-flag lap before the Penske Racing Dodges driven by Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch teamed up to take away the lead going down the backstretch.
Newman won the race and Stewart finished third behind his nemesis, Kurt Busch, and it left the two-time NASCAR Cup champion trying to find a way to deal with his latest heartbreak.
“I’m disappointed, obviously,” Stewart said. “It would be a lie to come in here and say I was happy about going from first to third on the last lap of the Daytona 500.
“I just made the wrong decision on the backstretch. I tried to get down in front of (teammate) Kyle Busch and thought I would get a push down there. And then the 2 (Kurt Busch) got glued to the 12 (Newman).”
The race winner called it a “push from heaven,” and it would allow him to score the biggest victory of his career and give team owner Roger Penske his first Daytona 500 win.
Penske knows all about winning big races. He holds the record for most Indianapolis 500 wins with 14.
Stewart, who used to be a tremendous IndyCar driver, thought he was finally going to win his first Daytona 500 since switching to Cup in 1999.
It was just another “Daytona Disappointment” for the driver from Columbus, Ind., after he had positioned himself to win.
“In hindsight, on Monday I’m going to be a lot happier about it,” Stewart said. “But I thought we were going to have a fun hair-cutting party in here tonight.”
Stewart had promised the media if he won the Daytona 500, he would let them cut his long hair, which has been a source of conversation by fans, media and fellow competitors.
“It’s probably one of the most disappointing moments of my racing career,” Stewart said forlornly.
Although he finished third and won $871,049, Stewart didn’t come to Daytona looking for another top-five finish.
He came to win and anything short of that just made it that much more difficult for him to accept after leading four times for 16 laps.
Stewart made the decision to keep his Toyota low on the track while the Penske Dodges went high. But when he was down there, Kyle Busch wasn’t close enough to give him help.
“Stewart could’ve went up and blocked the momentum of the 12 (Ryan Newman) and the 2 (Kurt Busch), but he decided to stick down low and stay with me to see what we could come up with,” Kyle Busch explained.“I wasn’t getting a big enough push from behind to get up to his back bumper. Once I did get to the back bumper, I just held the gas down. 
“I didn’t care how hard I hit him — it was coming to the checkered flag.”
By then it was too late.
“We had two of the fastest cars, both Kyle and I,” Stewart said. “When we could get a run, they absolutely flew. I was hoping to pull Kyle along. I knew the 2 was behind the 12 and I’d rather have my teammate behind me than two teammates from another team behind me.
“I made the wrong decision, obviously. As fast as they were coming I don’t know that it wouldn’t have wrecked me if I blocked anyway.”
Stewart believes he “hung out” Kyle on the restart when the mad scramble at the end just didn’t play out in his favor.
“I tried to win the Daytona 500,” Stewart said. “You work all day to win the Daytona 500. You work all day to try to get yourself in a position to win. Then, when you get a restart with four to go, you got to do what you got to do to try to get that trophy.
“I did what I felt was the right thing for me. I felt like we did what we had set out the do. The last lap just didn’t work out.”