Racing’s Tony Stewart Looking for More Fun in Valley of Sun

The last time Tony Stewart raced at Phoenix International Raceway he won two different-style races and finished second in a third--all on the same afternoon. So he sees no reason why he can’t win a single race here Sunday.

Stewart, defending champion in the Indy Racing League and winner of the first IRL race this season in Orlando, Fla., is a heavy favorite to make it two in a row in the Dura-Lube 200 on Phoenix’s mile oval.

“This track has been really good to me,” Stewart said between practice runs Friday. “I love coming here. It’s as pretty a place as we run all year. It’s hard to keep from looking at the backdrop the mountains make when you’re on the track. It’s just a great atmosphere.”

During the Copper Classic here last month, Stewart won the midget and Silver Crown main events and ran second in super modifieds. In 21 years, no one had ever won two races on the same program.

Will those victories help him Sunday in an Indy car?

“Actually, it’s more the other way around,” he said. “Having raced an Indy car here a couple of times gave me more of an advantage in the other three kinds of racing.”

If Stewart had his way, he would be dropping in at nearby Manzanita Speedway tonight and running in the Sprint Car Racing Assn.’s main event.

“I would love it,” he said. “I ran there during the Copper Classic in 1996, but I don’t think [car owner] John Menard would be very happy if he heard about it this time.”

That doesn’t mean, though, that the 26-year-old Stewart will restrict his driving to the 11-race Pep Boys IRL schedule.

“I’ll probably race about 70 to 75 times this year,” he said.

Those races will include 20 Busch Grand National stock car events for owner Joe Gibbs, perhaps a few Winston Cup races to prepare him for the 1999 season, four IROC races--”I wish there were 20 instead of just four”--a dozen or so USAC midget and Silver Crown races, plus a few more in a late-model dirt-track car he recently bought.

“Then I’ll probably get down to Rushville for a TQ race sometime during the summer.”

It was at Rushville, Ind., on a tiny fifth-mile oval that Stewart made his TQ debut in 1990 after having raced karts for 10 years.

He since has won three USAC championships in a single year in 1995, started on the pole in the Indianapolis 500 and won the IRL championship, but Stewart hasn’t forgotten his racing roots.

Finding himself with a rare holiday off a year ago, Stewart went back to Rushville, climbed into a friend’s TQ, won his heat and led every lap of the main event.

“You know, people find it hard to believe me sometimes, but I get just as much enjoyment from running in Rushville with 2,000 people yelling and screaming as I do racing at Indy in front of 400,000.”

As perhaps the most versatile driver in racing today, what is Stewart’s favorite type of racing?

“All of them,” he replied quickly. “I want to win in everything I get in, and I’ll get in anything with wheels that moves. I said once that if they put Weed Eater engines on tricycles and planned a race, I’d want to be there. It got a lot of laughs, but I really meant it.”

Obviously, Stewart is a raceaholic.

Consider the coming week. After racing Sunday, he will fly to Charlotte Monday, then test Tuesday and Wednesday in his Grand National car at Hickory Speedway, and race it Saturday at Bristol, Tenn. When that race is over, he will fly to Indiana, where he will race Saturday night in his dirt-track car at Brownstown.

“That’s four different tracks I’ll drive on in a week,” he said. “If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t keep punishing my body the way I do. Even with good days on good tracks, your body gets beat up in a race car.

“But I can’t imagine doing anything else. Last week, I had three days off, without getting in a race car, and I felt like my life was wasting away, that I wasn’t being productive.”

Stewart also has goals to match his ambitious schedule.

“I want to be the first to win the Indy 500, the Daytona 500, the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Knoxville Nationals,” he said.

“A.J. [Foyt] has won three of them, that’s why I threw Knoxville in there. He’s never won that.”

The Knoxville (Iowa) Nationals are considered the Indy 500 of sprint car racing.

Next year, Stewart will be driving full time for Gibbs, joining Bobby Labonte on the former Super Bowl coach’s Winston Cup team.

“I know it’s a tremendous opportunity to get a chance to race for Joe Gibbs, but it was probably the toughest decision I ever had to make, because it means I’ll have to cut way back on my other racing,” Stewart said.

“The one thing Joe said I could count on, though, was running the Indy 500 with John Menard. Both of them were very cooperative in working things out with me. Winning Indianapolis has been my dream since I was 11. Joe understood that, and John said he’d have a car for me.

“Our plan is to win Indy this year and then come back next year as defending champion.”

If he races at Indy next year, Stewart will also keep his Winston Cup date at Charlotte later that same day.

“That’s no problem running two races the same day at different tracks,” he said. “I’ll do that this week, in fact. It’s no big deal.”

In the meantime, there’s the job of qualifying today for the Dura-Lube 200 and the race Sunday.

Stewart said, “It’s getting tougher in IRL each year, each race I should say. There are six or eight drivers who could win any time. Both the Kelley Automotive drivers [Scott Sharp and Mark Dismore] have been really fast testing. Then there’s always Arie [Luyendyk] to contend with, and Roberto [Guerrero] is always tough at Phoenix.

“And I can’t forget my teammate, Robbie Buhl. You’re always in a good situation when one of your main concerns is beating your teammate.”

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Dura-Lube 200

* Site: Phoenix International Raceway (mile oval).

* Schedule: Today, qualifying, 2 p.m. (Ch. 7, delayed, 5:30 p.m.); Sunday, race, 1 p.m. (Ch. 7, delayed).

* Defending champion: Jim Guthrie.