Stewart puts sprint racing on hold
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. — For Tony Stewart, there was no greater joy than escaping his everyday life and climbing behind the wheel of a sprint car. He loves the feel, the way they drive, the purity he finds at all the tiny dirt tracks across the country.
When he broke his leg racing his sprint car a year ago, an injury that sidelined him for six months, he was almost defiant in his desire to never give up his hobby. But after the death of Kevin Ward Jr., who was killed when Stewart's car struck him as Ward walked on an upstate New York dirt track on Aug. 9, Stewart may never get back in a sprint car.
"I would say it's going to be a long time before you ever see me in a sprint car again, if ever. I don't have any desire at this moment to get back in a car," Stewart told The Associated Press in his first interview since a grand jury decided he would not be charged in Ward's death.
"If I had the option to go right now to a race, I wouldn't. I don't even know when I'll go to a sprint-car race again to watch. I can promise you it's going to be a long time before you ever see me back in one."
Sitting on his couch Thursday night in his Huntersville, North Carolina, home, a sprint car race in Arkansas was on mute on his television. Stewart's eyes were constantly drawn to the action. He can't help himself. It's where he came from, how he made his name and the one form of racing he simply couldn't walk away from, even as he was criticized for jeopardizing his lucrative NASCAR career by messing around in the dirt.
He just couldn't give it up. Not when he became a multi-millionaire and one of NASCAR's biggest names, not after good friend Jason Leffler was killed in a sprint-car race last year, and not after his own injury led to three surgeries, a month in bed and forced him to miss NASCAR races for the first time in his career.
Stewart is addicted to the simplicity of sprint-car racing, to racing at venues across the country where the crowd is starving for gimmick-free racing. He didn't care that a field full of drivers of varying ages and talent was racing for purses that rarely reach $5,000.
Stewart has been grappling with the decision to leave sprint racing since his 2013 crash at an Iowa dirt track. He'd only returned to sprint-car racing one month before Ward's death.
Kevin Harvick turned a lap at 162.933 mph to win the pole Friday at Dover International Speedway, leading the field for the third Chase race. Led by Harvick, Chase for the Sprint Cup championship drivers took the top four spots and six of 10. Kyle Busch starts second, followed by Denny Hamlin and Brad Keselowski. Jeff Gordon is sixth and Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson is eighth. The rest of the Chase field has Kasey Kahne 12th, Matt Kenseth 14th, Joey Logano 16th, Carl Edwards 18th, Ryan Newman 20th, Aric Almirola 21st, Kurt Busch 22nd, Dale Earnhardt Jr. 25th, Greg Biffle 27th, and AJ Allmendinger 28th. Four drivers will be eliminated after every third race, and a win guarantees a driver an automatic berth into the next round. The first cutoff race is Dover.