Yahoo Autos New career chapter means a new kind of fun for Tony Stewart
Tony Stewart is having fun again.
Stewart, of course, has a wide-ranging resume. He holds victories and championships in open-wheel and stock cars, team ownership (and championships) in multiple disciplines, plus track ownership. Just last month, Stewart celebrated his 34th championship as a team owner when in back-to-back weeks, Cole Custer claimed the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship and Matt Hagan did so in NHRA Funny Car.
But at 52 years old, the fun for Stewart has come from something entirely new for himself: going over 200 miles an hour in less than six seconds.
“If you would have said last year, ‘You’re going to go run this year and going into the finale, you’re going to be second in points and have won four races,’ I’d be like, ‘You’re crazy,'” Stewart told RACER of his NHRA Top Alcohol season. “But it’s been a fun year. I haven’t had this much fun racing in a long time.
“It’s the feel at the track that you should feel at the track.”
There is plenty of hard work and racing in the NHRA, but when there is downtime, Stewart loves how everyone knows how to let loose and play just as hard. Because the NHRA doesn’t have an “over the top” corporate feel to Stewart, he has come to love its atmosphere. It’s easy to remember everyone’s name, there is a unique relationship with one’s team and of course, Stewart gets to be around his wife and fellow competitor, Leah Pruett.
“It has been refreshing to do something where you’re happy with how things are done,” Stewart said. “You feel like from the sanctioning body to the teams to the drivers to the crew members, everybody involved, for the most part, is pulling the rope in the same direction for the same goal. I feel like that’s lost in other forms of motorsports right now.”
Stewart’s move into Top Alcohol has already brought some success. Image via NHRA
Stewart ran a full season in Top Alcohol Dragster with McPhillips Racing after making his debut in the fall of 2022. His national event victories were at Las Vegas and Reading, while his regional event victories were at Indianapolis and Reading.
Although he led the championship point standings throughout periods of the season, Stewart finished second to Julie Nataas. A disqualification at zMAX Dragway in late September became a double whammy when Nataas won the weekend. Stewart’s team was not allowed to compete in the event and earned no points because of unapproved ignition parts.
There have been many differences for Stewart behind the wheel. In oval racing, Stewart was always able to focus forward – literally. A straightaway or a turn was ahead, and there were other competitors to keep focused on. In drag racing, Stewart has many motions to go through once the car is fired.
An unexpected development was knowing where to train his eyes. Stewart has spent much of his career doing rolling starts but drag racing is a standing start, meaning it’s a learned skill to adjust his eyes from looking at the Christmas tree and then catching up with his moving car and the track ahead.
Thankfully, it became second nature throughout the year. With time comes a rhythm, and everything slows down.
“I tell people that I laughed when I heard somebody say, ‘Oh, we use 18% of our brains,’” Stewart said. “I’m like, who is the person who figured that out? But I truly believe that, finally. The first time I watched Leah go down the track, I saw a silhouette of the car, fumes and clutch dust. Now when I watch her run, if that car moves left or right or the tire starts to shake a little bit, I can tell you almost how far down the racetrack it happened. And it looks like it takes eight seconds versus a second and a half
“Your brain can learn to process information faster, but I think it’s like anything else – if you want to bench press 400 pounds, you couldn’t just climb on the bench and do it. You have to work up to it. I think your brain is the same way.”
Stewart called time on his Cup career in 2016, but has found plenty of ways to keep busy since. John Harrelson/Motorsport Images
Stewart’s driving career has a new life and possibly a new expiration date, given his love of drag racing. After retiring from NASCAR in 2016, Stewart hasn’t driven a stock car since, and it’s also been a few years since he’s driven a sprint car. SRX, the series Stewart co-founded, came along in 2021 and has a six-race schedule which Stewart has participated in and has been successful doing.
But drag racing takes a different toll on the body. Yes, it is physically taxing, but short runs throughout a weekend play a part in why Stewart sees other drag racers who stay behind the wheel far longer than the career of a NASCAR driver.
“I think it’s been harder on my body this year, in all honesty,” Stewart admitted. “What people don’t realize is just on a clean pass alone, the G forces, the swing you have between the Gs when you hit the gas and the Gs when you hit the chutes. That’s enough to tax your body more than people realize. But then, on top of that, what hurts the worst, honestly, is when it goes into tire shake. The only way I can explain it is it’s the world’s most expensive paint shaker when that happens.”
While Stewart is considered a generational talent who has been successful in everything he’s driven, drag racing has been far from any of his comfort zones. Take two of auto racing’s biggest variables, the driver and the machine. For much of Stewart’s life, he’s driven something where the driver can make a difference through their talent, knowledge or adaptability. But in drag racing, one of Stewart’s biggest adjustments has been understanding the burden is more on the crew chief than the driver.
“Every form of motorsports I’ve been a part of, it takes an entire team, and everybody working on that thing has an impact on the performance of that car,” Stewart said. “But at the end of the day, I have the ultimate control of it. I could only do what the car would let me do, and there were times I could manipulate it and make it do things it didn’t necessarily want to do. But I had control of that. And the crew chief, as much as they are a huge part of it in almost every form of motorsports, the driver ultimately is the determining factor.
“In drag racing, it’s just the opposite of that. The driver is super important; they have to leave on time, they have to keep the car in the groove, they have to make split-second decisions through the entire run. If the tires spin or shake, what do you do? So, the driver is super important, but it’s ultimately about what that tune up is. So, I feel like the pressure is a lot higher on the crew chiefs than the drivers.”
A lot of change will surround Stewart in 2024. As a car owner, Stewart-Haas Racing goes into a new Xfinity Series season with two drivers primed to make a postseason run. On the Cup Series side, there will be two new drivers in the fold as the program enters the post-Kevin Harvick era.
And in drag, Hagan will defend his title (which was the first for Stewart’s operation) while Stewart becomes his teammate. Stewart will move into the Top Fuel category driving Pruett’s car as the two focus on starting a family.
Fun indeed.
