Two weeks do not a turnaround make, but compared to the rest of 2015, Tony Stewart has reason for optimism.
The struggling NASCAR driver, who has not won a Sprint Cup Series race since June, 2013, scored just his second top-10 finish in 19 races of the 2015 season with a ninth-place performance on Sunday at Sunday's Windows 10 400 at Pocono Raceway.
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His only other top-10 finish of the season came at the Food City 500 in Support of Steve Byrnes and Stand Up to Cancer race at Bristol Motor Speedway in April.
Stewart qualified fifth at Pocono after qualifying fourth - earning the fastest lap in qualifying - at the Crown Royal Presents the Jeff Kyle 400 at the Brickyard at Indianapolis Motor Speedway the previous weekend. Stewart ran as high as second in that race before a series of restarts and questionable pit strategy knocked him down to a 28th-place effort.
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"I think we're starting to kind of get a read on this thing a little bit," Stewart said in his post-race media release, according to Bleacher Report. "I'm not going to say after two weeks that we've got it figured out, because that would be very premature, but at least this weekend we got going a lot better than we had been.
"I'm hopeful the rest of it will start to come around a little bit. And at least this is some momentum."
Bleacher Report added, however, that Stewart could face a difficult week ahead, and it has nothing to do with his team or the race at Watkins Glen International.
Sunday will mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Kevin Ward Jr., in which Stewart's right rear tire caught the driver and sent him airborne some 50 feet to his death at a dirt-track event in Nicaraigua, N.Y.
Stewart and Ward got tangled up on the track - although one report says the cars of the two drivers never touched - sending Ward into the wall and ending his race. An angry Ward approached Stewart's car as it came back around and got too close.
Stewart can be forgiven if he doesn't build on his momentum this week, but if he does, it'll be another great sign that he's close to being back.
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