Turkey Night Too Good to Pass Up

By SHAV GLICK

Nov. 23, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

In two years, Tony Stewart has become one of NASCAR’s finest Winston Cup stock car drivers, but his heart and soul remain with his open-wheel racing roots.

Three days after a crewman’s mistake caused him to crash his 3,400-pound Pontiac Grand Prix at Atlanta, Stewart will strap himself into a 900-pound midget car tonight and drive in the 60th Home Depot Turkey Night Midget Grand Prix at Irwindale Speedway.

Stewart has a bruised back and stiff neck from the 200-mph crash, but when Krista, his girlfriend, asked him to stay home and rest his back instead of flying to California for 100 laps of midget car racing, he told her, “Missing Turkey Night would be like not eating my favorite food for a year.”

With six wins--two more than any other driver--Stewart was as dominant in Winston Cup racing as his teammate, Bobby Labonte, who won his first championship for former Washington Redskin coach Joe Gibbs’ team.

Tonight, Stewart will be in one of four Steve Lewis-owned Beasts, all prepared by builder Bob East, that could easily finish 1-2-3-4 in the final U.S. Auto Club race of the year. Last year, Jason Leffler, Stewart and Dave Darland finished 1-2-3 on Turkey Night. The same trio is back, along with Kasey Kahne, 22, the reigning USAC midget champion, in Lewis’ stable.

“One of the most important factors in winning races is having confidence in your team,” Stewart said. “ With Steve and Bob, I know I’ll be going out there with the most competitive team, in the best prepared race car, one of four guys with the same equipment, so I will have a big advantage over all but the three other guys on Steve’s team.”

Stewart came West right after the final Winston Cup race last year, took no more than a dozen practice laps on Irwindale’s half-mile paved oval, and went out and set a USAC track record of 104.920 mph, circling the track in 17.156 seconds.

How difficult is it to jump from a heavy, steel-encased 700-horsepower stock car into a jouncy 300-horsepower vehicle more than three times lighter with almost no time to acclimate yourself?

“It’s kind of like taking off a pair of street shoes and slipping into a comfortable pair of old shoes,” he said. “Or kind of like riding a bike. Once you’ve done it, you never forget.

“By the time the car leaves the push truck and I make one corner, I’ll feel right at home.” (Midget race cars do not have self-starters and must be pushed to start.)

Stewart won his sixth Winston Cup race at Homestead, Fla., the same day that Labonte clinched his championship. The two took a victory lap together.

“I am just thankful to Bobby to let me share that with him,” Stewart said. “Nobody deserved to win the championship more than Bobby Labonte. He’s a great teammate. It’s hard to explain how much of a help he is to me and how much of an inspiration he is to me in my career.

“With five races to go, and being right in the midst of trying to win, he was still coming up to me in practice asking if my car was all right and if I needed anything. Most guys that are trying to win a championship wouldn’t be worried about what his teammate was doing. That just shows what kind of a person Bobby really is. He’s a great person and hopefully I can be like him one day.”

Although a 34-race schedule--which next year will increase to 36--is enough for most Winston Cup drivers, it’s not enough for the 29-year-old from Rushville, Ind., where he is remembered as the Rushville Rocket.

“As long as I was involved in USAC, I wanted to race in all the classics, the Hoosier Dome, Copper Classic, 4-Crown Nationals, Night Before the 500, Hut Hundred, Chili Bowl and Turkey Night, especially Turkey Night,” he said.

“There’s no way Joe [Gibbs] would let me run some of them because they’re during the Cup season, so I want to take advantage of being able to race at Irwindale.”

Before he left USAC to drive in the Indy Racing League in 1996, Stewart won the Hut Hundred at Terre Haute, Ind., and the 4-Crown Nationals at Rossburg, Ohio, in 1995, the year he won three USAC championships--midgets, sprint cars and Silver Crown.

He has also won the Cooper Classic in Phoenix three times, 1997, 1998 and this year. Like Turkey Night, it falls during stock car’s off-season.

“Another big reason I want to race Turkey Night is because of the Agajanian family and its heritage,” he said. “Cary Agajanian is my attorney and it was his father [J.C.] who kept the race going years ago. I never got to race at Ascot Park, I missed the final race by a year, but I feel like I’m racing with my family on Thanksgiving.”

The Agajanians are co-promoters of tonight’s race.

Stewart is still fretting over how he lost last year’s race to Leffler, his teammate then and also now on Gibbs’ NASCAR team.

“Jason and I both knew we were fast enough to leave the field,” he said. “We enjoyed racing each other so we kept it pretty close until it was time to show your cards. I got the lead, pulled out and had the biggest lead of the race, about four or five car lengths, when my oil pump belt broke. Jason’s a good friend of mine and a fine racer, but I don’t like losing to anyone.”

Stewart is also upset over the freakish circumstances that sent him into the wall last Monday at Atlanta.

“The tire carrier brought out wrong-side tires,” he said. “They put a left-side tire on the right front. The tire pressures are completely different, so it upset the car’s balance. I almost got underneath Ricky Craven and the next thing I knew, I about hit him in the left side and ended up in the wall coming off the second turn. I was lucky I didn’t hit at as steep angle as I could have. It banged up my back pretty good, though.”

Stewart’s occasional forays into USAC races are not his only attachment to open-wheel racing.

He owns a team, Tony Stewart Motorsports, that will run winged sprint cars in the World of Outlaws series next year with Danny Lasoski as the driver.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Facts

* What--60th U.S. Auto Club midget car race.

* Where--Irwindale Speedway, half-mile paved oval.

* When--Today. Qualifications, 4 p.m. First race, 7.

* Distance--100 laps, or 50 miles.

* Track record--Tony Stewart, 104.920 mph.

* Defending champion--Jason Leffler, Long Beach.

* USAC champion--Kasey Kahne, Enumclaw, Wash.

* Purse--$33,000, winner gets $6,000.