What's Up, Smoke?

Tony Stewart is, quite honestly, a throwback. He can drive pretty much anything and win with it. Dirt, pavement, oval track or road course, ol' Smoke climbs in and starts throwing down.

This year, however, he's had a dismal start to the season. How dismal?

ESPN's Terry Blount recounted the following facts (from ESPN.com):

• In 15 Sprint Cup seasons, Stewart never has gone seven consecutive races without posting a top-10, until now.

• He never before had a stretch where he finished outside the top 10 in 10 of 11 starts (dating back to the end of last season), as he has now.

• He never had an average finish of 21.1, which he has at the moment. His worst was 14.9 in 2008.

• Stewart never has gone through a stretch like this one where he finished so poorly compared to where he started each event. He's a minus-7.5 (13.6 to 21.1) this year, the worst of any full-time Cup driver. His previous worse was minus-0.7 in 2003 and 2010.

• He never has finished a season worse than 11th in the standings. He's 22nd after the first nine races of 2013.

• Stewart has finished on the lead lap in only five of nine races this year. He has failed to finish on the lead lap in 10 of the past 17 races, dating back to last season.

• Stewart has led a lap in only one of the past 15 races, 18 laps at Fontana earlier this year, the worst stretch of his career. He went 10 consecutive races without leading lap from the end of last year through the first four races this year. The only other time that happened was the start of the 2000 season.

• Stewart-Haas Racing has gone 27 consecutive races without a victory, the longest winless streak for SHR since Stewart took over as the team owner in 2009.

In a word...yuck.

So, while everyone goes through a slump now and again, this is a mega-slump for Smoke. It's shocking, is what it is.

So, why? Why is a team that won the series championship in 2011 with one of the greatest 10-race performances in the sport's history suddenly running on seven cylinders?

It could be the new car, which not everyone has figured out yet. He gets his cars and engines from Hendrick Motorsports, which has figured them out, but his team builds them out and preps them.

It could be team ownership and the stresses he faces there. Sponsorship, spending money, the thousand-and-12 details he is responsible for on a daily basis.

Shoot, it could be just a bad patch. We all have them. 

Richmond is where he won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, and he has referred to it as his favorite track many times. He finished 18th, despite running well much of the night and getting knocked silly by Kurt Busch in the final restart.

Talladega, when he won there for the first time, was a favorite from that point on, despite the fact that he is not particularly fond of plate racing.

If he doesn't run well this weekend, you might have to hit the silk and realize that he's probably not going to make the playoffs this year.

It's still early, yes, but it's also not as early as it was nine races ago, if you follow that.

What's up, Smoke? It might be his time as a contender this year.