Tony Stewart’s Elevation to NHRA Top Fuel Class Shakes Things Up at Home, Too

As a long-time auto racing writer, it’s fairly commonplace when some of the biggest names in motorsports unexpectedly call me out of the blue.

But a call I had earlier this year was one for the books.

I’m driving along the interstate, my wife beside me, when my phone rang one June afternoon. While not totally unusual, it still isn’t every day that the voice on the other end of the call was Tony Stewart.

But it IS VERY UNUSUAL when I answer, put the call on speaker so I can drive hands-free, and Tony says, “Hey, Jerry, do you have a spare bedroom I can crash in for a while?”

I am willing to bet very few—if any—reporters will ever have THAT kind of call in their careers. But such is the case after I wrote a lengthy profile on Stewart for Autoweek. Stewart and I have a long, friendly history together, dating back to my 20-plus years of covering NASCAR.

Stewart had been in Chicago for the NHRA drag race at Route 66 Raceway a few days earlier and I subsequently wrote a piece for Autoweek where the three-time NASCAR Cup champ and 1997 Indy Racing League champ admitted he was “freaked out” about becoming a father.

Because of his comments and my story, Tony's wife, Leah Pruett, got so angry about the story that she relegated Tony the husband, not Tony her team owner and boss, to sleeping on the sofa as a result.

“Hey, look, I don’t have any problem with your story. I thought it was totally fine. You and I are totally good,” Tony said. “But Leah, well, she is looking at it in a whole different way.”

Perhaps Tony had prematurely spilled the beans about him and his wife wanting to have kids sooner rather than later.

As we sat in Pruett’s Tony Stewart Racing hauler for what was supposed to be a brief 10-minute interview that morphed into a 45-minute chat between a couple of longtime friends, I couldn’t help but ask the three-time NASCAR Cup champ, NASCAR Hall of Famer and budding NHRA drag racer if he and his wife were thinking about starting a family anytime soon.

Tony has always been very candid and transparent with me. In fact, I can proudly say we’ve never had a cross word between us, unlike many of my sports writing peers over the years during Tony’s days as a driver. Stewart proceeded to open up, really open up. It was almost as if he had just been waiting for someone to ask him about becoming a father. Fortunately, that someone was me.

“I freaked out about the whole process, to be honest,” Stewart laughed, when discussing chats he had with Leah about having kids. “I can't even take care of myself. She has to take care of me.”

But seriously, Stewart quickly admitted he was looking forward to the day he becomes a father—a day that suddenly may be coming much sooner now, in light of Thursday’s announcement that Stewart was moving up to the NHRA Top Fuel ranks in 2024 while Leah was stepping out of her 330-mph race car to start a family.

“I'm not gonna lie, I'm excited about it,” Stewart said back then about one day being called “Daddy.” “But I want it to be when the timing is right for us.

“I'm already so old now anyway, my poor kids are going to be at their high school graduation, there's kids that aren't gonna know who I am and they're gonna go, ‘Oh, your grandfather came.’ My poor kids are gonna have to say, ‘No, that’s my dad.’ So it's just like, whatever, it is what it is, but I'm excited about the possibility, sure, absolutely.”