General

How can anyone root for Tony Stewart?

Jan 28, 2011, 9:18 AM UTC

That’s a question that, nowadays, doesn’t seem like such a big deal to answer - unless, of course, you are an accredited member of the NASCAR media or an Australian dirt track promoter.

He’s the All-American boy, a simple guy from Indiana who lives in his childhood home. He drives the All-American trademark, a Chevrolet - to the Ford enthusiasts, sorry - and can usually be spotted at or near the front of the field. He remains fiercely competitive and brutally honest - as the aforementioned media members and track promoter can attest - with a talent for driving that is only matched by his passion for helping others.

Indeed, Tony Stewart is, for the most part, Mr. Popular.

It wasn’t always like that.

As recently as 2007, when Stewart and then-teammate Denny Hamlin crashed out of the top-two positions during the Pepsi 400 at Daytona and then engaged in a war of words that was only diffused seven days later by team owner Joe Gibbs, the man called Smoke - and his fans - seemed to be under a perpetual cloud of controversy.

Back then, the question held merit. Really, how could anyone root for a guy like Tony Stewart, the ticking time bomb with the loose-cannon mouth that was such a jerk to other drivers, reporters, and even his own fans? Surely they had to be just as big a jerk as he was, right?

Even now, at times - usually after any given Friday afternoon gab-session at the media center of any given NASCAR track - the question pops up. How can anybody root for a guy that is that rude to somebody just doing his or her job?

I think I’m qualified to answer that question, and with the approval of Bob Ellis, bossman here at NASCAR Ranting and Raving, I’ll be glad to do so.

Sure, I’m as eager to be accepted and taken seriously as a commentator on this sport I love as anybody else who does this blogging deal. That’s why I rarely write stories about my favorite drivers and write more with my head than with my heart, in an effort to be taken seriously.

At the end of the day, though, I’m just a fan - nothing more, nothing less - and just like any fan, I have my guys I root for when the journalism cap comes off and the fan cap comes on. On Sundays - and some Saturdays and even Mondays - that cap is red with a #14 on the front.

I’ve been a Tony Stewart fan for over a decade, and I am about as passionate a fan of his as you’ll find - while keeping things on a realistic level, mind you. I’m not one of those “My guy rocks, y’alls guys suck”-type fans or one that wants to play judge, jury, and executioner anytime someone gets within two inches of his Chevy or when his pit crew stumbles and costs him a spot or five. When he screws up, I own up to it as a fan and admit he screwed up. I call a spade a spade, to utilize an oft-used Tony Stewart phrase, even when it comes to my driver.

So, how anyone can root for Tony Stewart for thirteen years - and counting?

You start off by being an independent thinker and not letting people question and sway your fanhood, especially if you’re of an age where your parents can still tell you what to do and influence your opinions. If I hadn’t been that independent thinker, my Tony Stewart fanhood would have ended before it really got started.

I had just turned 11 the previous December when, in May of ‘98, I became a fan. It came about through an article in the old “Racing Milestones” publication. My then-favorite driver, Bill Elliott, was on the cover, but one of the features was on Tony. It talked about his open wheel successes - three USAC championships in one season?! This guy had to be good! - as well as his stock car prospects with Joe Gibbs.

One day, on a whim, I turned on ESPN2’s coverage of Indianapolis 500 practice. I’ll admit, I was a bit of a dumb kid - it wasn’t until the second week of watching practice that I realized Robbie Buhl was driving the #3 Johns Manville car, not 1983 Indy winner Tom Sneva as I had somehow deduced - and perhaps that played a role in my rooting for Stewart. He was the cool, young dude with the awesome looking race car - fluorescent yellow and day-glo orange - that was at or near the top of the speed charts every day. Plus he had the #1 on his car, reserved in open wheel racing for the defending series champion.

In short, he was my new favorite driver.

The keyword there is “new,” because I went through phases where I would act like a guy - usually after getting a toy of his race car - was my new favorite driver, such as Jeff Burton in 1994, but when the new on the car wore off, so did the new on the driver and I went back to rooting for Bill Elliott. I’d gotten a toy of Tony’s IndyCar - part of a set of Micro Machines from the 1996 Indy 500 - so there was room for history to repeat itself, which probably would have led me back to rooting for Arie Luyendyk in the IRL.

But for now, he was my driver.

And of course, like any responsible parent, my mom wanted to know about my new driver, so on Memorial Day weekend, May 24, to be exact, she sat down with my father and I to watch the 82nd running of the Indianapolis 500.

Stewart started fourth in that beautiful Glidden/Menards Oldsmobile Dallara, took the lead from Greg Ray entering the first turn on lap 21, and had the engine blow sky high one lap later. Once his car had been towed back to the pit lane, there was Jack Arute, leading to the following exchange:

Arute: The emotions for Tony Stewart, describe them.

Stewart: Well, this is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do in my life, this has been my number one goal, and every year I get s**t on doing it.

My mom: Boy you you just messed up, you can’t say that on ABC!

Needless to say, she didn’t want her little boy rooting for Tony Stewart. I won out, but had she been watching a race that fall at the Texas Motor Speedway, when Gary Gerould interviewed him after his Menard Aurora V8 had failed him again - I watched six IRL races that year and he finished fifth in one, second in another but was docked his championship points for failing inspection, and blew up in the other four - and he launched into another profanity-laced tirade, that would’ve been it.

Of course, Stewart’s mouth didn’t stop stirring up trouble in 1999. It still hasn’t, in all reality, which has begged the question.

How can anyone root for Tony Stewart, that guy who lets his emotions and an all-too-short fuse control his mouth and actions?

The answer is simple: Tony’s emotions and that all-too-short fuse come from his desire to win. Not to just be good, but to be the best. The same passion that has driven him to eleven national driving championships is the same passion that has made it seem like the world was slipping off its axis when he wasn’t on probation or in some kind of hot water.

That’s not to say that you turn a blind eye to it. There are things Tony has said and done that have made me cringe, but, like I said before, he was and is my driver, and if you’re going to take him at his best - when there’s nobody easier in racing to root for - you better be willing to take him at his worst, too.

Through all the controversy that surrounded him from 2000 through that 2007 incident with Hamlin, I never wavered as a fan of his. In fact, once things would die down was when things got boring. It was fun to be a Tony Stewart fan and, as such, one of the black sheep. Nobody liked Smoke unless he was their favorite driver; if he wasn’t, he was at or near the top of their bad list. There was no middle ground.

It did get tiring sometimes, especially in the spring and early summer of 2004 during the Darrell Waltrip-led witch-hunt where there was a new call for Tony to be suspended every other week, but as far as debating other fans or just having guys and gals look at my cap or t-shirt and ask me how in the world I could be a fan of that jerk, that’s something I look back upon fondly and even miss at times. Its been a long time since I was able to say, “Yeah, I root for Tony Stewart,” and gotten a reply like “Isn’t the the guy who (insert any number of infractions)?”

In short, if you’re a Kyle Busch fan, enjoy it, because once he mellows out and the next bad boy comes along, you might find yourself in the same situation.

So, how can anyone root for Tony Stewart, the guy who is such a jerk to the media and acts like just by wanting a soundbyte that they’ve ruined his day when all they’re doing is their job?

The answer is simple: they’re there to do their job, and he’s there to do his. The difference is, thousands of fans don’t pack into the grandstands and millions more don’t tune in to watch the race on television each week for the reporters - Krista Voda and Lindsay Czarniak aside.

Honestly, when Tony lashes out, it seems to be in response to questions that have nothing to do with that particular race weekend or nothing to do with him at all. Furthermore, he is always at his sultriest after a poor practice session when, instead of debriefing with Darian Grubb and Jeff Meendering and figuring out why he’s struggling, he’s stuck talking to reporters.

If I’ve learned anything from the last thirteen years, it’s this: if you want anything from Tony Stewart when things aren’t going well, you don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell.

Granted, there are times when he is a little quick to anger and sarcasm, but at the end of the day, he’s there to be a race car driver. Not a public relations expert, which is why he has Mike Arning around. I have a hard time seeing how anyone - the reporters he snubs or belittles aside - can fault him for being primarly concerned with the job he’s there to do with everything else often becoming little more than a secondary annoyance.

Like I said, I want to be accepted as a commentator on this sport I’ve loved since I was in diapers. Being a Tony Stewart fan on top of that, or perhaps, in spite of that, probably makes me look like a chicken wearing a Colonel Sanders t-shirt. In truth, by watching him, I’ve learned a bit about how I would approach being a writer or reporter and the type of care I would take to make sure I did the research and asked the right questions, not just of Stewart but of all people in NASCAR.

Of course, I’m just a fan, an outsider, but perhaps some of the current NASCAR media corps could try to take a similar stance, rather than asking a question he deems irrelevant, getting a less-than-pleasant response, and filling up article space and Twitter feeds with comments on what a sultry ogre he is.

The question I’ve gotten the most, however, is how in the world can anyone root for Tony Stewart’s when he treats his fans so badly, refusing to sign autographs or even acknowledge their existence at a race track?

The answer is simple: if you want to root for a guy so you can get an autograph, root for Jeff Gordon. He supposedly signs everything he’s asked to sign. If you want to root for a guy so you can get a smile and a wave, Carl Edwards is probably your guy.

Just like he isn’t there to play PR rep, Stewart isn’t at a track to sign autographs or mingle with fans. He’s there to race.

That’s not to say he doesn’t sign autographs or give his fans attention; there are plenty of at-track stories of fan encounters with him. When he doesn’t do those things, however, it doesn’t diminish my opinion of him at all, because I don’t root for him what he can give me.

I don’t root for Tony Stewart for any kind of fan service outside of the enjoyment I get out of watching the sucker drive a race car. I’ve never gone to a race looking for anything else that I could get from him. I’ve never even gone to an autograph session at an Office Depot or Home Depot store - which, by the way, have annually numbered upwards of the amount of appearances most Sprint Cup stars do.

In fact, I’ve never met Tony in person, period.

That doesn’t mean that I never want to meet him. I do, but not for an autograph. I would just like to shake his hand and say “Thanks.” That would be about all I could muster, but it would be enough for me, perhaps along with a quick photo just in case my memory fails me in my later years. I would never approach him at a race track to do it, though.