Tag: Tony Stewart
Junior Johnson not teaming with Jimmie Johnson any time soon
Posted Jun 30, 2010, under NASCAR News and Opinion
CAROL FITZGERALD
YAHOOSPORTS.COM
Racing legend Junior Johnson, who won fifty races as a driver and six Championships as an owner, gets this kind of thing fairly regularly. In 2008, a reporter for ESPN asked him to choose between Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch, and Carl Edwards. Johnson had three championships, Carl had a great season and the cover of Men’s Fitness, and Kyle had 8 Cup wins that season, and an attitude.
And the winner was… drumroll please… Kyle Busch. (Insert record-scratch sound effect here.) “I like his hell-bent driving style,” Johnson was quoted as saying. “He’s going to do what he needs to do. You’ve just got to polish him a little.” (A little?)
Asked a similar question just a few days ago, Junior Johnson would choose … Tony Stewart. Not four-time champion Jimmie Johnson.
Stewart provides thrills in dirt-track race
Posted Jun 24, 2010, under NASCAR News and Opinion
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ESPN.COM
WEST FARGO, N.D. — It was another state and another dirt-track race for Tony Stewart. But not another victory.
The two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion, known for racing just about anything with four wheels, finished third in the 25-lap late-model feature Wednesday at the Red River Valley Speedway. He won his heat earlier in the night.
Stewart told the crowd that it was a “tricky track” that he didn’t figure out until it was too late.
“I think I’ll be a little bit better when I come back,” he said, drawing a roar from the crowd that stayed until nearly midnight for the final result.
Stewart came to North Dakota to promote the three-eighths-mile dirt track, which is being run this summer by the father of four-time World Of Outlaws champion Donny Schatz. Schatz races for Stewart.
“It’s cool to come here to Fargo and get a chance to run here,” Stewart told the crowd during a break in the program.
Stewart led early in the 24-car feature but fell back before the midway point. Cody Skytland of Fargo won the event.
Stewart said before the event that spending three days in North Dakota reminded him of his early days in racing, when he used to sleep in his car because he couldn’t afford a hotel. He said he has raced in about 40 states.
“I love what I do with NASCAR, but I’m still passionate about short track,” he said. “The good thing is that I get the luxury of having the best of both worlds.”
Stewart said he believes NASCAR should run a dirt-track race.
Stewart in the dark on Kahne speculation
Posted Apr 18, 2010, under NASCAR News and Opinion
By Terry Blount
ESPN.com
FORT WORTH, Texas — If Kasey Kahne is going to Stewart Haas Racing next year, somebody forgot to tell team owner Tony Stewart.
Kahne has signed with Hendrick Motorsports for 2011, but there isn’t an opening with the organization next year. Mark Martin said Friday he plans to stay in the No. 5 Chevy in 2011. Kahne will take over for that team in 2012.
That led to speculation that Kahne will drive one year for SHR, which has an alignment with Hendrick Motorsports. SHR leases engines and chassis from Hendrick Motorsports.
“You guys need to talk to Kasey because we don’t know anything about it,” Stewart said Friday. “I found out Tuesday [about Kahne's move] the same time you guys did. I don’t have the answers because nobody has talked to me about it. It’s all speculation and I can’t talk and make it make sense.”
Kahne said he has no idea at this point what car he will drive in 2011.
“I’ll work through it with Mr. Hendrick and figure it out,” Kahne said Friday. “We will do what make the most sense. Rick [Hendrick] said he will make sure it’s right. I take that to mean it will be a good situation for me. A lot of people will work on this the next couple of months to make sure that happens.”
Time to take a race from Fontana
Posted Feb 24, 2010, under NASCAR News and Opinion
By Terry Blount
ESPN.com
No more excuses. Time is up.
Auto Club Speedway can’t make it work with two Sprint Cup races a year.
Yes, the economy is horrible in Southern California. Yes, the races this past weekend were going head to head with the Winter Olympics. And yes, the weather was cold and drizzly at times.
It’s always something. But at some point, you just have to fess up and admit the truth. The Fontana facility can’t draw enough interest to support two events a year.
“If it’s not here, it will be somewhere else,” Tony Stewart said this past weekend at ACS. “It doesn’t matter to us as competitors. We just want to race and we really don’t care where it’s at.”
Safety measures have worked in NASCAR, but have they taken away an element of danger?
Posted Feb 15, 2010, under NASCAR News and Opinion
By Liz Clarke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 14, 2010
DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. — It was here on the high banks of Daytona International Speedway that NASCAR’s seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt was killed in a last-lap crash during the 2001 Daytona 500. In the years since, NASCAR has invested millions of dollars and untold engineering expertise in making its brand of stock-car racing safer.
Largely because of its radically redesigned racecar, more forgiving track walls and mandatory head-and-neck restraints, there hasn’t been a death in NASCAR’s top series since, though there have been plenty of wild crashes. Over the same time, growing ranks of race fans have groused that the racing has gotten boring.
As NASCAR officials search for ways to inject new life in what was the fastest-growing sport in America just a decade ago, some are privately wondering whether stock-car racing simply isn’t as compelling in the minds of fans now that the element of danger — or, at least, the perception of danger — has been removed.
No fan, of course, wants to see a racecar driver get killed or seriously injured. The mere suggestion that NASCAR loyalists come to see wrecks raises hackles.
Fans come to see the close competition, they’ll testify. They come to see Earnhardt’s son, known universally as “Junior,” beat the pants off Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. They come for the ear-splitting noise and raw speed.
