For all of Tony Stewart’s bad-boy reputation, for all his missteps and outbursts, he has suffered no punishment as harsh as what fate has dealt him at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Since he was 7, driving his first go-kart, growing up in nearby Rushville, Ind., Stewart has dreamed of winning at Indy.
He is 33 now, and winless in 10 races at his personal mecca, his home track.
So often tantalized by sniffs of victory at Indy, he has only tempest and heartbreak to show for five Indy 500s and five Brickyard 400s.
Yet he loves it so.
“There’s something in everybody’s life they’re very passionate about,” he said while preparing for Saturday’s qualifying session and Sunday’s 11th running of NASCAR’s 400-mile race here. “And for me, that’s winning at the Brickyard.”
He meant the nickname of the Speedway in general, not just the stock car race.
From the extreme pressure in his rookie year in the 500, 1996, to getting himself into big trouble by striking a photographer in 2002, to last year when he dominated through two-thirds of the 400 before pit mistakes ruined his day, Stewart has never left this place smiling on a race day.
Yet he can’t get enough.
“The fact that it comes around only once a year is the hard part,” he said, referring to foregoing the 500 the last three years to focus more on his NASCAR effort.
Last May he couldn’t stay away. He showed up on the last day of qualifying for the 500, on what began as a lark, but couldn’t resist–he was about to climb into an A.J. Foyt-owned Indy car to try to make the field when his NASCAR sponsors nixed the deal via cell phone to his agent on the pit road.
“You can let it monopolize your mind,” he admitted about this place. “But at the same time, that has also helped me get to this level of my career.”
The Indy setbacks have steeled him, and the persistence here has applied to everywhere else he races. Overall, he has won season championships in both the IRL and NASCAR and has 18 major NASCAR wins.
The spotlight was blinding when he arrived for his first 500 in ’96. First, he was the poster boy for the new Indy Racing League, which sought to raise young Americans off the heartland dirt tracks.
Then he suddenly and tragically inherited the pole for that rookie start after his veteran teammate, Scott Brayton, was killed during practice. That was the point at which he turned and snarled at the media hounding him. “I’m a race driver and I’ve got a job to do,” he snapped, strongly implying he wasn’t allowing himself to think about Brayton’s death in a car almost identical to the one Stewart drove.
In that first race he shot into the lead at record speed, with early laps at more than 236 m.p.h., but then a faulty popoff valve in the turbocharged engine forced him out of the race.
That taught him early on just how meaningless it is to be a prerace favorite at Indy.
“I’ve been a sentimental favorite and a legitimate favorite to win here,” he said, “but I’ve always come up short.”
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In the 400 of 2001, he was a persistent threat to win until he clipped the wall in Turn 2 with only 23 laps left. In ’02 he started on the pole and led on four different occasions before his car began to handle fitfully and he finished 12th. That left him so frustrated that he thumped the photographer afterward, which cost him $60,000 in fines from NASCAR and his primary sponsor, Home Depot, and probation for the rest of that season.
He is no longer tantalized merely by leading or even dominating. “It really doesn’t mean anything to me until that last lap happens,” he said. “There’s just something about Indy. It’s probably one of the hardest places to win a race.”