History doesn’t have to wait anymore for Tony Stewart in drag racing.
Stewart, in his second season driving an NHRA Top Fuel dragster, became the first NASCAR Cup series champ (2002, ‘05, ‘11) and IndyCar titleist (1997) to win in NHRA professional competition. He also won the 2006 International Race of Champions series crown, in addition to being a USAC Triple Crown winner in 1995 with titles in Silver Crown, Sprint and Midget. The Midget championship was his second in a row. In NASCAR, IndyCar and USAC combined, Stewart has won more than 100 times.
Stewart accomplished his historic drag racing feat Sunday when he took home the title at the 4-Wide Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The win came for the team he owns.
In the finals quad, Stewart clocked a 3.870-second elapsed time at 317.42 mph to defeat Antron Brown (3.912), Justin Ashley (3.965), and Jasmine Salinas (4.237).
“It’s unreal. I told somebody, I said, ‘I haven’t been around NHRA that long;’ obviously about five years, honestly,” Stewart said. “And I realized it takes a lot. It takes a long time to win a race in this series. But everything in my career, I never had to wait over a year to win a race. I always figured it out in the first year and multiple wins normally, but just very appreciative.”
In his first quad of the day, Stewart clocked a 3.864-second ET at 321.19 mph to defeat Steve Torrence, Steven Chrisman, and Rob Passey. In Round Two, he ran 3.943 to edge Ashley, Torrence, and a red-lighting Doug Kalitta.
“And today … two holeshots in the first two rounds and my worst light of the weekend came in the final unfortunately. But that’s where (crew chiefs) Neal Strausbaugh and Mike Domagala, they got us that win in the final,” Stewart said. “So, very appreciative. I think we all needed it. It’s been so stressful the whole year after Leah (Pruett, Stewart’s wife) almost won a world championship two years ago to sit there and get in the car last year and people in the stands don’t realize it. They think I’m the reason the car sucks.
“It wasn’t that we had bad people tuning on it, just it was a different combination. There were different variables that changed. My body weight is different, tubing changes … changes a year ago – which, everybody had it, so it wasn’t like it was something just special for us. But just really frustrating. We could not get on a path to where we could make gains last year. Just super frustrating. It was like we were a ping-pong ball. We were either going out and shaking the tires because it was weak or frying the tires on the hit, and couldn’t do the same thing twice, and I don’t have the experience to be able to help these guys – and never will honestly. That’s why these guys – the crews used to make more than the drivers do in NHRA, and it’s because they’re the biggest variable in the equation. But to sit there and think right now, two years ago we were doing this and won our first NHRA race, a Four-Wide with that Top Alcohol Dragster, and two years later come back here and win with the Top Fuel (dragster) is pretty damn cool.”
Stewart snared his first NHRA Wally when he took home the Top Alcohol Dragster crown at the Four-Wide Nationals in Vegas in April 2023.
The day marked Stewart’s 24th career Top Fuel race and his third trip to the final round. Win No. 1 came two weeks after being in the finals at Pomona, California, and losing to Clay Millican.
Last season, Stewart finished ninth in the standings.
“I’ve been a motorsports fan my entire life, and I feel like what we did (Sunday) is history-making in motorsports as a whole. I don’t think there’s ever been a driver to win an IndyCar race, a NASCAR race, a (USAC) Triple Crown, and win an NHRA Top Fuel race,” Stewart said. “So to do this and do it with our own team and our family … I think probably the one thing that may not sink in as much right now, but it’s already starting to, is when Leah brought Dom (their 5-month old son) up on the stage there when we were doing the interview after that, that’s an emotion that you can’t even think about or dream of.
“And when I saw her coming up those steps with him, my heart stopped. As much as I love winning this race for our team and for myself and for our family, seeing her bring him up there, that was a feeling I’ve never had in my life before. And I have a feeling when I lay down and put my head on a pillow tonight, that’s going to be the one thing that I’m going to reflect on most.”
Some drivers aren’t fans of the Four Wide drag racing – which NHRA introduced March 2010 at zMAX Dragway in Charlotte – but Stewart embraces the format.
“I just remember when I came here the first time with Leah, and she was talking about how a lot of the drivers don’t like this format just because it’s different, it’s non-traditional,” Stewart said. “And I kind of looked at that, especially when I ran the alcohol car there last year, with the Top Fuel dragster for the first time. This is an equalizer, I feel like, because there are drivers who are out of their comfort zone. They’re used to two lanes and one opponent, and now they have three opponents; they got four bulbs to look at out there. To me, that’s an equalizer because I embraced it, I loved it. I felt like now that brings them back a little bit because they’re uncomfortable and I’m used to stuff like this. It’s when you’re not used to a pattern and you’re not used to rhythm, you’re creating that. So, for those guys to have to get out of their comfort zone and do something different a couple times a year – and for me to not even have a comfort zone yet – it equalizes the field, I feel like. So, I love them.
“It’s more accustomed to what I’m used to. You don’t have to win your heat race to win a sprint car race, you got to run so far up in your heat race to transfer the A-main – and then you got to win the A. So that’s kind of what today is like is: You don’t have to win each round. We did – I mean we won the first two rounds ourselves – but you don’t have to, you just got to finish in the top two to get to the final. And then in the final you got to win the race to win it. So, I like it. We can’t get to Charlotte fast enough. If we raced to Charlotte (on Monday), it wouldn’t be soon enough for me. So, I am excited that twice in Charlotte (this year), we get to run four lights. I like the format. I know it’s not traditional. I haven’t been around long enough to get set in my ways yet. I like things that create a little bit of chaos occasionally.”
Up next on the NHRA national event circuit is the American Rebel Light NHRA Four-Wide Nationals, April 25-27, at zMAX.
Although Stewart felt like Four-Wide racing in Vegas worked to his advantage he didn’t believe that’s why he won.
“Theoretically, yes. We flat-out won our first two quads, and then our car was fast enough to win the quad in the finals,” Stewart said. “I think we had a shot to win this thing outright. The weather this weekend was an equalizer as well. The format’s an equalizer for the drivers, but the weather is tricky. The teams that make big power make big speed. This is not a track this weekend where you’re going to make big speed. So, for the teams that make that big power, they have to pull their cars way back to accommodate for what the track conditions were, and we’re not to that stage yet, so we didn’t have to pull back quite as far. I feel like that made it a lot more equal for all of us because nobody could just sit there and throw down and just throw up big numbers today. It made it a tuners game, and our guys did a great job doing that.”
Even though Stewart was a Hall of Fame driver before he started competing in the NHRA ranks, he admitted the transition to drag racing wasn’t seamless for him.
“I think what you saw at the top end (of the track after his win) was relief. Because it’s pressure for me because it’s me and what I’ve done in motorsports in my history and our path that we’ve taken,” Stewart said. “We never took a year to win a race in any kind of race car that we’ve ever driven, that we’ve won races in. After Leah almost won a world championship (in 2023) and then I get in the car and we’re struggling and the fans in the stands don’t totally understand what it is. Everything I drove before I got into NHRA was 70% of the equation was the car and the crew was 30% of the equation. Over here, it’s the opposite. Now I’m 30% of the equation, and that car and the team are that 70%. So, when it’s not going down the racetrack and it’s got my name on the doors and on the car, they look and go, ‘Well, she almost won a world championship a year ago. He sucks.’ But I didn’t suck.
“I finished fifth in reaction-time average for the season. You go ask Neal and Mike, they said I did a great job last year. But it doesn’t show in the results, unfortunately, and the people in the stands that aren’t just diehard drag race fans, they don’t understand that. They look at me and go, ‘This guy is terrible. He needs to get …’ I mean, I’m reading on social media, ‘They need to put his wife back in the car. She did way better.” It’s hard to argue with that when the results show that.”
And even though Stewart was considered one of the best drivers in the world of motorsports, all those wins didn’t carry much weight when he ventured into the unknown – for him – of drag racing.
“Oddly enough, literally 90 to 95% of how I made my living driving race cars doesn’t even apply over here. The only time it really applies is when both of us, when both cars in both lanes have to pedal it, that’s when my history and the stuff that I was good at back in the day of keeping the tire hooked up underneath me, that’s where that comes into play,” Stewart said.
“But it’s just so different. It’s such a different discipline over here. From the time the light hits ’til you get to the line, driving the car part has been the easiest part for me. It’s been all the procedures and the staging and the mindset that you have to have when you get in the car and the mindset when you start the car to make the run. It’s all those things that we never think about in any other form of motorsports. Those are the things that are super-important over here, and putting the whole run together, the cadence of it, knowing how much fuel we burn, how much the fuel weighs – if you change any of those variables very far, it’s going to directly alter the way that car performs down the racetrack. Shoot, when we pushed off for a sprint-car race, we’re not thinking about that. When we pulled off pit row in a Cup car or Indy car, we didn’t think about that. We’re sitting and thinking, ‘Well, we’re going to know in about five laps what our balance is.’”
Stewart believes his team began turning the corner on progress after the season-opening, non-sanctioned NHRA PRO Superstar Shootout the first week of February in Bradenton, Florida. That’s an event when everything went wrong.
“We went to the PRO race at Bradenton, and we made 14 runs in the five days we were down there, and they only made it down the track three times out of 14 runs. They took the car back to Brownsburg (Ind.) and changed everything, and then show up at Gainesville and we have two days of testing. We had one washout on Saturday. We made a total of 10 runs that week. And eight out of 10 runs that day down the racetrack and it was like a sportsman car that was consistent. …
“And a lot of that work came from the Funny Car team as well (with his driver Matt Hagan). It’s not just Mike and Neal, it’s Phil Shuler and Mike Knudsen on the Funny Car side that everybody just pitched in together and we’re all helping each other. And our motto at TSR is, ‘We’re one team, all team.’ And that’s truly what this win is about is the effort of everybody, not just the Top Fuel guys, but our entire program working together to get the results.”
Results Stewart was thrilled to see finally come to fruition.
“It just makes you proud when you’re at the top end. And as much as it’s a stress for me as an owner and the driver, can you imagine what the stress is for the crew chiefs who are running me? It’s in their hands, and so when it’s not going right … it’s bad enough for me owning it, the stress I feel, imagine the stress those guys have felt.
“So today, to sit there and go, ‘Finally these guys got the monkey off their back.’ And to sit there and look at the time slip up there, I was third off the line and (my guys) won the race. That makes me happy because they want us to race. I won us the first two, they won us the last one and that’s a team effort right there. But for those guys in particular, for Neal and Mike,they carry so much weight of having to run me. It’s a pressure that not all the other teams have here and it’s hard for those guys. So just feeling relief for those guys more than anything. It’s just great to finally put the whole package together.”
Coming off the runner-up showing at Pomona, Stewart knew it wasn’t a given his team would perform as well, or better, in Las Vegas.
“I think it’s hard for me to know where it was going to land. I just wanted to see progress this year,” Stewart said. “Everybody goes, ‘What’s your expectations this season?’ I really didn’t have any, other than I just want to see the needle moving in the right direction and making progress. Gainesville was a step in that direction and it’s like, ‘Man, that was great.’ So, we go to Phoenix and you’re like, ‘Man, I hope we are on the same path we were at Gainesville and Phoenix.’ We were on the same path. I mean, we lost in the second round (to Brittany Force), but we had a consistent car through qualifying – made it down all four runs in qualifying. So, go to Pomona with a consistent car and get to the finals. You see that it’s moving in the right direction. IThe hard part with this is you don’t always win the race even though you turn the win light on. Sometimes the other team wins the race for you, with misfortune.
“Doug (Kalitta) spun the tires at Pomona. Shawn (Langdon) had a hole out on the step. We got some lucky breaks that helped us get to the final, and we just couldn’t capitalize on it. I think that’s what made it so disheartening. We went up against three giant teams the first three rounds and then couldn’t capitalize on it. And Clay’s no slouch, by any means. Rick Ware’s team does an awesome job, winning the U.S. Nationals last year and their record speaks for itself.
“So, there’s no layups in it; it’s just not there. But that was our best opportunity to win a race, and we stepped them up and it threw up on itself, and I sat there and watched him blow up and I pedaled it. He was so far out there and had so much car speed that even if I stayed in it when I got back in it, I wasn’t going to run him down. And that’s discipline on my side. That’s the only thing I took away from the final round; that I was proud of was that I didn’t just lose my mind and try to jump back in and try to chase him down and make a mistake and cost us a motor or something.”
The effort of Stewart at the Winternationals wasn’t lost on Millican.
“Clay came over after they got done with their photos and he was done with his media session, he was walking back, he goes, ‘You’re close. It’s coming.’ And it takes someone like him and Steve Torrence and these guys (like) Doug Kalitta to tell you they see it because they’ve been around it long enough to know,” Stewart said. “You think it’s coming at some point, but you just don’t know until it happens. But the good thing, like I said, I was seeing the needle moving in the right direction and that was the goal this year is just to get us going down the right path. And eventually, hopefully we would have a day where we put it all together – and today was that day.”
After finally getting this elusive Top Fuel win, Stewart is optimistic the wait for No. 2 will not be nearly as long.
“My whole life in motorsports, it seems like every new car that we went to race in, that first one was the hardest one to get,” Stewart said. “And it seems like once you get that first one, it’s not like you do anything different, but it just seems like it relaxes everybody, and it just seems like the next one comes a little bit easier. I think you put so much pressure on winning that first one that you put yourself in a position to make mistakes.
“When getting this first one out of the way, now we can go race and we know we can do it, we’ve proven we can do it. Now we just have to execute it each week. But it takes that pressure off the individuals who are working on the car and me as a driver every week. We can just show up and race now.”
