Racing superstar Tony Stewart has conquered a lot. Next up? zMAX Dragway in Concord
Once he finally arrived to his home in Arizona last week — a few days after all the hoopla and excitement surrounding his first NHRA win at Las Vegas on April 16 came to a peak — racing superstar Tony Stewart finally got a chance to reflect.
About the resolve of his team.
About his gratitude for his wife, NHRA Top Fuel Drag Racer Leah Pruett, who has fueled his new love for drag racing.
About everything.
“You start thinking, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool,’ ” Stewart told The Observer in a phone conversation. “And I start thinking about all the things that I’ve done in all the different disciplines of motorsports. And to be able to add this to that list is something that really means a lot to me.”
Stewart won by three one-thousandths of a second in only his fourth start in the Top Alcohol Dragster ranks in the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals two weekends ago.
And he’ll be making his fifth NHRA start in North Carolina this weekend — a place the NASCAR legend knows quite well.
The driver many know as “Smoke” is set to run at the zMAX Dragway just outside of Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord for the NHRA four-wide event on Sunday. Stewart means a lot to this part of the state, where the competitive heartbeat of NASCAR is located. He is a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and has made 53 Cup starts on the CMS pavement. He’s also a co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing and a regular voice in the Fox broadcast booth for Cup races on Sundays.
Stewart said embarking on this new form of motorsports has been unexpectedly and pleasantly gratifying.
“I think what makes it more special is I get to do it with my wife, and she’s my teacher,” Stewart said of Pruett. “I mean, I learned a lot at Frank Hawley’s driving school, but every day I’ve got a teacher who’s with me here, and I’ll just randomly — at random times, at random spots — think of a question, and she tolerates it, and she answers it, and we go on down the road.”
His friends on the NHRA side have taken notice of Stewart’s enjoyment in the sport. Ron Capps, a three-time Funny Car champion in the NHRA ranks, remembers chasing down Stewart right after his win at Las Vegas.
“Obviously, he’s won everything he’s jumped in,” Capps said of Stewart, who has now won in NHRA, NASCAR and IndyCar. Capps then smiled: “I was like, ‘If he wins, it’s gonna make it look like it’s so easy over here.’ Which he does anyway. He does it in whatever he jumps in. In fact, when he won, I raced into the top end of the track there and congratulated him.
“So it was exciting. I haven’t seen him smile that big in a long time.”
Stewart’s presence in NHRA has undoubtedly swelled interest in drag racing. Whenever a racing series can pull from fans of all different motorsports disciplines — like what Stewart has done in creating Superstar Racing Experience, which is beginning its third season on ESPN this summer — it makes for a rising tide that lifts all boats. (The event tried to capitalize on this idea on Thursday for what was called “NASCAR night,” where NASCAR Cup drivers faced off against NHRA drivers at the dragway, but the event was canceled because of rain.)
But Stewart is racing for more than a mere attempt to bring awareness to NHRA.
He is doing it because, in his words, “I love it.”
“If nobody comes, I’m doing it because I love it,” Stewart said. “That’s my motivation, and my drive and my desire to do it. I’m just saying: I’m telling you, if you show up, you’re going to feel something you’ve never felt before. And I think you’re going to like it.”
That feeling? Smells of nitro. Sights of cars going 320-plus mph. The sounds. The interactions between drivers working on the cars while fans ask them questions.
“I think race fans look at it like you can’t do more than one thing at a time,” he said, “and you really can.”
Stewart, after all, has proven it his whole career.
