Stewart seems to pitch a fit, hit a home run

Tony Stewart was due. Due for a win, and due for a blow-up.
It had been 20 races - 18 this year - since Stewart had won a Cup race. It had been nearly that many since the volatile Stewart had blown his top.
Both were bound to happen soon.
It does about this time every year.
Stewart, of course, went off big-time after his wreck with Denny Hamlin at Daytona July 7, lashing out at his teammate and "throwing him under the bus," as Hamlin put it.
His public admonishment of Hamlin made headlines and TV clips throughout the sports world, angered his teammate and sent the entire Joe Gibbs Racing organization into a uproar.
The wounds festered for a week and weren't healed by the time the circuit rolled into Chicagoland Speedway July 13, prompting team owner Joe Gibbs to show up for a powwow with his two drivers.
The public rebuke Hamlin received from Stewart was nothing compared to the tongue-lashing the two drivers got from Gibbs, according to Hamlin and other team members.
"I've never seen coach fired up quite the way he was," Hamlin said.
A day later, Stewart, of course, went out and whipped the field at Chicago, the way he seems to do every time adversity comes his way or he makes a public spectacle of himself.
There are two things you can almost always count on in NASCAR every year: One, Stewart will pitch a major temper tantrum at some point; and two, shortly after that tantrum, he will catch fire, win a bunch of races and quickly put the incident behind him.
And, usually, those two things occur during the second-half of the season, or, in this case, just past the halfway point.
Stewart is one of those rare athletes who allows his frustrations and pent-up aggression to bubble to the surface until he eventually blows, often causing embarrassment and humiliation for himself and his team.
But when he does, he has a unique habit of rechanneling that negative energy and turning it into something positive - usually trips to victory lane.
It was no coincidence, then, that Stewart's first win of the season came a week after he blew up at Hamlin and the day after his infamous meeting with Gibbs.
"With Tony, there's always a lot of chaos going on," says J.D. Gibbs, president of Joe Gibbs Racing. "I think, for him, he's passionate about what he does. From day one he's always told you what he's thinking."
Gibbs says Stewart's recent frustration stems more from not winning than from the on-track incident with Hamlin.
"Unless he's winning consistently, he's going to be frustrated," Gibbs said. "I think the same is true with [all our guys]. All those guys are used to winning. If they don't win they're going to be frustrated. I don't think there's any undercurrent or any kind of hidden message in all of this, I think it was just about time he won."
Stewart, like Hamlin, had run well all season, leading several races and running up front. Hamlin finally won at New Hampshire July 1. Then, two weeks later, Stewart broke through.
"I know they were kind of stressed-out, like we were, to finally get a win," Hamlin said. "It seems like they always bounce back. Whenever there's adversity they always seem to pull together and come back and get a win. It's good for them."
It could be bad, though, for the competition. The win could have sparked a hot streak, one that is likely to continue this week at Indy.
Two years ago, Stewart won at Indy in the midst of a stretch of five wins in seven races, which sparked his run to his second Cup title. Last year, though he missed the Chase, he won races at Daytona, Kansas, Atlanta and Texas in the second half of the season
Though he is just sixth in points after 19 races, Stewart seems like a lock to make the Chase this year. And once he does, he will almost certainly be a threat.
"He's been strong all year," points leader Jeff Gordon said. "They just haven't gotten the wins. And now he's got the wins. I never doubted him a bit. I feel like no matter what, that guy is a threat for the championship whether they've won races or not. And those last 10 [races] you know that team is going to step it up, and by getting them a win, that's just going to give them some momentum."