THROWBACK THURSDAY. Tony Stewart announces retirement from NASCAR after 2016 season. Time for some career highlights with ‘Smoke’, the documentary
It’s official NASCAR’s bad boy – Tony Stewart – will hang up his helmet at the end of the 2016 Sprint Cup season, his 18th in succession in the series. During an illustrious, if occasionally bumpy, career the Indiana-native secured 48 Sprint Cup victories and 15 pole positions racing for Joe Gibbs and his own eponymous team en-route to three championships in 2002, 2005 and 2011. Before that, an impressive single seater career netted him the 1997 Indy Racing League title, and though victory lane at IndyCar’s most hallowed turf ultimately eluded him, in both 1999 and 2001, Stewart entered both the Indy 500 and the Charlotte 600, on the same day. Rather puts that ‘seat swap’ drive he took in Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren MP4-23 around Watkin’s Glen in 2011 into perspective, doesn’t it…?
Turns out finding a couple of highlight videos though is kind of tricky: type ‘Tony Stewart NASCAR’ into YouTube, and the next three hours of your life will be lost to fights, wrecks, hurled helmets, and what drivers REALLY think of Danica Patrick. In the end, we thought this documentary from 2005 – Smoke – would do the job nicely, give or take a few nauseating ‘American-isms’. Sorry, no references to Kevin Ward Jr here…
Oh, and you may not remember, but Tony also ‘starred’ alongside Dale Earnhardt Jr in the music video for ‘The Road I’m On’ by 3 Doors Down. An awful lot to look back on when he mounts the pit wall in 2017 as business partner Gene Haas concentrates on his newly setup Formula 1 outfit…
*Shot courtesy of RacingBlog
