HAMPTON, Ga. – Oh, the spins coming out of Atlanta Motor Speedway.

            Not the ones on the track. Not the blown tires, spewing oil and screeching sheet metal. The biggest spin in NASCAR these days is the one formed by clashing propaganda.

            Tony Stewart, after winning for the first time this year, actually said he felt better about this season – fourth in points, one win, two poles – than last season, where at this point he had 3,694 points (109 more than Kevin Harvick’s total now) and three wins. Stewart led the points by 237 then. He trails Harvick by 283 now.

            Yet Stewart said after winning the Emory Healthcare 500 that a year ago, he was leading the points and headed downhill, while, this year, he’s trailing but reeling in other contenders by leaps and bounds.

            Funny how Stewart didn’t say much about this feeling, this “plummeting” from the lead sensation, a year ago.

            Why? Because of equal parts spin and human nature. If the drivers meant the stupid flotsam they spew every week, they’d think a lot more about what they said.

            Stewart had just won, though. He was happy. The two-time champion had just climbed out of the car – OK, well, actually, he spent a great deal of time in victory lane, then spent quite a while on ESPN Sportscenter, then he wandered into the media center – after winning a 500-mile race, and things naturally seemed great, even in comparison to a year earlier when he was … leading the points.

“I don't know if we have peaked,” said Stewart. “How do you know when you've peaked?  I guess if you're winning every week, you feel like you're peaking to a certain degree. … It's been a lot of little steps in the last 10 to 12 races.

“At this stage (in 2009), we were pointing downhill, and this year, I feel like we are pointing uphill.”

Statistics do show that the first two finishers in Sunday night’s race are the most consistent in the Sprint Cup Series … recently. Carl Edwards’ average finish over the past eight races is 5.0, but Edwards hasn’t yet won this year. Stewart’s average over the past 11 is 9.18. The difference between the two is that Stewart has finished 25^th or worse twice. Discard those two, and his average (in the other nine races) is 5.44.

Now Stewart has won a race this year.

            Darian Grubb, Stewart’s crew chief, said that the difference between the best pit crew and the worst is 3/10ths of a second. That’s not true. The difference between Stewart’s crew and, let’s see, Michael McDowell’s crew is, well, hard to figure because, lots of times, McDowell doesn’t even pit because the car is already being loaded on the transporter.

            The difference between the best pit crew and the fifth-best, or maybe the 10^th best, might be 3/10ths of a second.

            Both Stewart and his team are flushed with success at the moment, and with the Chase for the Sprint Cup about to commence in two weeks, it’s not a bad place to be.

You may contact Monte Dutton at mdutton@gastongazette.com.