NASCAR: Tony Stewart: Pocono 500 preview

ATLANTA -- A win at Pocono Raceway may not have the cachet of winning a Daytona 500 or a Brickyard 400, but it does carry an equal amount of satisfaction simply because it's a hard place to master. Just ask Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet and defending race winner of the Pocono 500.

Stewart earned the 16th of his 17 career NASCAR Nextel Cup Series victories and his first of the 2003 season in last year's Pocono 500. After posting two top-fives and seven top-10s in his eight previous visits to Pocono, Stewart and The Home Depot Racing Team finally hit on a chassis setup that complemented Pocono's unique layout.

The track is best described as a 2.5-mile triangle, with none of its three corners alike. It begins with an enormously long front straightaway that dumps into a tight, semi-banked corner. Upon leaving turn one and shooting down another straightaway, drivers are subjected to the tunnel turn, a very narrow half-corner. If unscathed, drivers exit the tunnel turn and speed down a third straightaway, only to negotiate another tight corner. Turn three is the final turn of the track, and with little banking, drivers must feather the throttle to get the balance and grip they need to race down that long front straightaway all over again.

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pocono is far from one of my favorite tracks, i have been to it several times and to watch a race there is BORING....the place is hugh and with the three corner layout all of the corners are so far away you can't really see the racing there, watching the cars go past on the front stretch quickly becomes as much fun as watching traffic on a freeway, it is so long that you lose all sense of the speed the cars are going. being in the mountains like it is the mornings are cold and often foggy, not a good feeling to crawl out of a tent into conditions like that when you are hung over and hurting....like i said, not my favorite track