SNOHOMISH, Wash. — Before he made his drag-racing debut as the No. 2 qualifier in the 16-car Top Alcohol Dragster field and recorded a runner-up finish at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Tony Stewart said, “If I fall in love with it, like I think I might, who knows what the future can hold?”
Just halfway through his Oct. 28-30 weekend, he said, “Yeah, I want to have a second date.” During eliminations, he said, “I’m definitely having more fun than I’ve had in a long time. Definitely not anywhere that has fenders on it, so I’m lovin’ this sport.”
Stewart answered the question about whether he can succeed in NHRA competition.
But he raised another question: Will he continue to drag race?
That was something he couldn’t answer right away.
As impressive as he was that weekend, beating former class champion Chris Demke to advance to the final and losing to first-time winner Madison Payne by only two ten-thousandths of a second, Stewart hadn’t calculated what was next. It seemed a shame he was building up a strong head of steam as the season was winding down — especially when he wasn’t racing at the finale and the 2023 season opener was four and a half months away.
However, all that, he said before eliminations began, was “way ahead of where my mind is. I haven’t even thought that far, honestly. This weekend was about just going through the experience and truly, after the weekend’s over, we’ll sit back and say, ‘Hey, is this something that we want to pursue and want to try to do more of?’”
After the weekend was over, his first order of business the next day was to go back to The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and make test passes in wife Leah Pruett’s Top Fuel dragster.
That only spun off more questions.
Is he thinking about stepping up to the Top Fuel class or just gaining some seat time? Is he interested in a three-car operation, adding a car of his own to Pruett’s dragster and Matt Hagan’s Funny Car? Or would he continue to compete in Top Alcohol Dragster with the McPhillips Racing team? What would he jettison to make time for drag racing?
Or maybe he wouldn’t have to drop anything at all. Might he shelve SRX, the series for which he’s a founder and inaugural series champion?
After all, Stewart said he “can’t just show up as a driver and not be a team owner still. I still have my responsibilities as an owner. After the weekend, we’ll sit there and go, ‘Was that overwhelming? Was it too much? Do I just need to stay in my lane and be an owner? Or does this seem like something that’s feasible?’ And honestly, I’m going to rely on Rich McPhillips, Sr. and Jr., and see what their comfort level is.”
He knows drag racing has been stimulating and that the cross-pollination of ideas and cultures might produce an advantage with his teams in other forms of motorsports.
“It’s just something so different than everything that I’ve done,” Stewart said. “You come over here and it’s like Fantasy Island — it’s way off on its own deal. The more that I learned, the further I felt like I was away from knowing everything I need to know. For me, it’s just nice to have something new that’s stimulating when you’re doing the same stuff. I make it sound like it’s super-boring. It’s not. Especially after all the kinds of different types of cars that I’m a part of, after 40 years of racing, it’s the same, but there’s little variations. You come over here and it’s drastically different.”
Simply put, he likes the challenge.
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody in this era that’s driven as many different types of race cars as I’ve driven, and to have the opportunity to do that … this is genuinely super-exciting for me.”
He said in October that “I’ve already started sleeping bad this week because I can’t get my brain to shut off at the end of the day and I’m thinking about everything and running procedures and simple things like the warm-up procedure in the pit where it’s just up on stands. I’ve been running through that procedure in my head, preparing. And it’s just all the little details that it takes that are super-important in the sport.
“You realize how many more hundreds of details are important. And the fact of trying to learn something new and trying to learn how to not necessarily perfect it, but to try to do it correctly, and to do it accurately and consistently, that’s what I really liked about this challenge.”
Stewart said the Las Vegas weekend was “a good weekend to find out how much interest I really have as far as down the road, and what would I want to compete in.”
His wife said, “There’s a lot of questions, and we don’t really have a plan, except to enjoy life and enjoy racing and conquering new endeavors together. This is a challenging sport. He’s understanding that.”
Stewart said, “I don’t know what the future is going to hold with it.”
Waiting to find out will be a new winter pastime.