Best Richmond International Raceway Drivers: No. 3, Tony Stewart

NASCAR drivers get asked the “What’s your favorite track?” question seemingly every race weekend. For many, the response isn’t very specific.

Some drivers answer, “The next one.” Others say, “I like all of them” or “The place where I got my last win.”

But if you ask Tony Stewart which track is his favorite, he’ll give you a specific answer: Richmond International Raceway.

“It is my favorite track,” Stewart said last year. “It’s not one of them, it’s the favorite track of mine on the circuit.”

It’s no wonder, then, that Stewart appears at No. 3 on our list of the best current Richmond International Raceway drivers. RIR just so happens to be a pretty good track for the man they call “Smoke.”

Tied with Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the most Richmond wins among active drivers (three), Stewart once recorded eight top-10 finishes in a span of nine races there.

With an average finish of 11.1 and 817 career laps led at the 3/4-mile oval, Stewart could have challenged for one of the top two spots on our list. But there’s one problem: His last three RIR finishes haven’t been as good: 17th, 23rd and 16th.

Still, Stewart is very capable of winning Richmond every time he shows up – as evidenced by the remarkable success he had early in his career.

Stewart’s very first NASCAR Cup win came at Richmond, in 1999 (and if you have a moment, we recommend this YouTube video of a breathless, clean-shaven Stewart in Victory Lane). That night, he completely dominated the field and led 333 of the 400 laps despite being a rookie making just his second start at the track.

At the time, he was the first NASCAR rookie to win a race in 12 years – Davey Allison had been the last driver to pull off the feat before Stewart.

Stewart then won again at Richmond in 2001 and 2002 (both times in the spring race), making him an impressive 3-for-7 to start his RIR career.

“I’ve just always thought it’s the perfect-sized track for a Cup race,” he said. “The other short tracks we run – Bristol and Martinsville – they’re cool in their own right, but there’s a lot of congestion at those two tracks. But at Richmond, it just seems like that extra quarter-mile and that three-quarter-mile shape and how wide the groove gets there allows for good racing.”

Though Stewart was successful right away at Richmond, he’s at a loss to explain why. He compared it to showing up at the quirky one-mile oval at Phoenix for the first time and immediately being good there – even though he’d never seen it before.

“(Phoenix) was a place where I became very comfortable right away,” Stewart said. “I had that same feeling when I went to Richmond for the first time. I think every driver has a track they go to where they get that same feeling. There are just some places you go to where you adjust, and it really suits your driving style.”