Tony Stewart is back, but there will be no fairy tale ending

A grizzled former champion whose best days are behind him and has experienced great pain physically and mentally as of late, returns miraculously from a severe, near crippling injury to make an improbable bid for another championship in what is his final season before retirement.

It’s the framework for the kind of story Disney would buy the rights to and eventually turn into a movie.

Yet this story won’t feature the feel-good ending. There will almost certainly be no push toward a fourth Cup Series championship in Tony Stewart’s last season as a full-time NASCAR competitor. Nor will he even likely win a single race.

Instead, Stewart will have to find solace in the fact that he even gets to race at all, something in serious doubt following a Jan. 31 all-terrain vehicle mishap in which he went off a dune estimated between 20-25 feet and fell with such force he broke his back.

A retirement tour that was supposed to span 36 races will now encompass 28, and, while he may not want the attention, Stewart will be celebrated for all that he accomplished on a near weekly basis. In many facets it will mirror Jeff Gordon’s swan song of a year ago.

But what Stewart will not do is replicate how Gordon said goodbye to a spectacular career. There will be no emotional victory that sees Stewart rejoice like a kid who receives a coveted gift on Christmas morning after securing himself a spot in the four-driver championship finale.

If this was the Stewart of 2011, then yes. Most definitely. That Stewart -- defiant, trash-talking -- won a record five of 10 Chase for the Sprint Cup playoff races to will himself to a third overall title, toppling Carl Edwards in as titanic a championship run as NASCAR has witnessed.

This current version of Stewart, the one that will climb back into the No. 14 car this weekend at Richmond International Raceway, is vastly different. Age 44, injuries -- a badly broken lower right leg in 2013, a burst fracture of his L1 vertebra in January -- have all factored prominently into why Stewart hasn’t won a Sprint Cup since June 2013 and collected just eight top-five finishes over his past 90 starts.

That futility is why it’s of little consequence NASCAR granted Stewart a waiver making him eligible to qualify for the Chase shortly after he announced his return Thursday. In the grand scheme it doesn’t matter. This isn’t Kyle Busch of a season ago, a driver in his peak years capable of winning on any kind of track any given week who can actually race his way in.

Stewart is no longer that driver. The wins and top-fives are now infrequent. More often than not he struggles just to be competitive.

Nonetheless, that the possibility of a longshot championship even exists in theory is an accomplishment. That is unquestionably a far better scenario than the one Stewart was facing just a few months ago when it appeared he would spend his final season injured acting as cheerleader rather than competing on the track.

At least this way Stewart’s career will conclude somewhat happily, even if it’s not the fairy tale ending once envisioned.