(Photo Credit: Peyton Lohr/Racing Refresh)
By Logan Morris
Tony Stewart has been involved in many things during his racing career. He’s both a NASCAR and IndyCar champion. He’s a champion in USAC. But, the career-defining drive is still there even as he approaches a new chapter in his life. When I caught up with the racing icon at the 47th Annual Cornwell Tools Night Under Fire just after his P2 qualifying run in his Top Alcohol Dragster for McPhillps Racing, he made it clear that all that experience has done very little to help his transition into Drag Racing over the last few years.
“I wish I could say all those 40-plus years of hell really helped at all, honestly, it's just such a totally different discipline. It's more about the procedure of everything than it is the actual time the lights drop and you get to the finish line. It's learning procedures and the cadence of the procedures and making sure you do not do anything wrong; you cannot afford a mistake. You know, sprint cars or everything else we ran if you made a mistake on one corner of a lap, you had a lot of laps to fix it. So, this is a whole different deal - the focus has to be 100% all the time, you can't be 95% focused. You've got to be 100% focused."
Some were scratching their heads at why Tony Stewart wouldn’t take advantage of a rare off-week from the NHRA schedule, but he told me in no uncertain terms is he interested in slowing down.
¨It's just who I've been my entire life, everyone is like ´Why are you racing here this weekend?´ I said, 'Because I'm here with a big car and I'm gonna race something somewhere every weekend every chance I get.' That's just what I do, so, I don't sit on my hands too well."
When I asked him specifically if he still has the passion he once did, he put any doubt to rest:
“Oh yeah. Well, my dad is 86 and he still races a quarter midget, so, I'd say I'm probably gonna race for a long time."
Stewart credits McPhillps Racing for helping him during this foray into drag racing. Still, he knows he has a lot of work to do.
"I learned a lot last year, I love racing with this family, they're great people, the McPhillips are awesome. The great thing is I learned a lot last year. When we get done, I'm gonna go in and look at the graph and then I'm gonna change but I know what I'm looking at on the graphs now with these guys. Now, when you go into the Top Fuel trailer and get on that computer, there's way more squiggly coloured lines than here so, I know what to focus on here and what I'm looking for. A lot of times it's really just to validate what I felt during the run and then I can say, this is the spot, here to here, and they can see the spot."
(Photo Credit: Peyton Lohr/Racing Refresh)
We also discussed one of the biggest challenges he’s facing during this unfamiliar period as a Top Fuel rookie and how he’s had to manage expectations.
“The biggest adjustment I've had to do is just manage expectations differently, as a driver my whole life - everything I've driven, if it wasn't exactly the way we needed it to be I could manipulate it and change what I did with my hands and my feet to manipulate the car, but you can't do that here. It's either gonna be right or it's not gonna be right. I can't make it go faster but I can screw up. That's why it's so important to make sure you're doing exactly the right things at the right times, you know, when it comes to race day when you have to pedal it or something that's when the drivers have to do the work and that's where it comes back into my hands a little bit and you hope you don't get in that situation too often."
Stewart still understands that unlike in other racing series, success in drag racing is largely determined by your crew chief and the team working on the car.
"Well, it's not my strategy as much as the crew chief's. This is a crew chief sport more than it is a driver's sport, I mean, I put 60, 70% of the success on the tuners because like I said we can't make it go faster so it's gonna run what it's gonna run. It's in their hands, not ours. It's that way with the clutch, with the fuel, timing, all the variables that we have in these cars. It's still in their hands."
Though he knows that, it’s a safe bet he’ll continue to do everything he can to maximize his end of the deal. He had a successful Night Under Fire coming up just short against Gary Pritchett in the final round of Top Alcohol Dragster Saturday night with a run of 5.272 at over 269 mph.
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