RELIVING STEWART’S GREATEST POSTRACE INTERVIEW
Tony Stewart is preparing to make his final visit to Talladega Superspeedway as a driver this weekend, which naturally brings up memories of his best postrace interview.
It was May 2012 when he climbed from his car at Talladega after finishing 24th and gave a perfectly straight- faced interview about restrictor- plate racing that was 100% sarcasm. But he looked so serious that some reporters were fooled into thinking he was being sincere, which only egged him on further.
“I had to look at it a couple times this week myself, just to remind myself how good of a job I did on that one,” he said Wednesday with a grin. “It was the greatest of all time, I have to admit.”
Among Stewart’s comments during four minutes of Oscar- worthy acting:
u“I’m just sorry we couldn’t crash more cars today. We didn’t fill the quota for Talladega and NASCAR.”
“Honestly, if we haven’t crashed at least 50% of the field by the end of the race, we need to extend the race until we crash at least 50% of the cars. It’s not fair to these fans to not see any more wrecks than that, any more torn- up cars. ... We still had over half the cars running at the end, and it shouldn’t be that way.”
“I had a blast. It would have been a lot more fun if I could have gotten caught up in one more wreck. If I would have done that, it would have been perfect.”
“I think we ought to make it a Figure Eight ( race). I mean, if we could make it a Figure Eight, it would be perfect. It would absolutely be perfect here. It’d be better than what we’ve got. Or we could stop at halfway, take a break, then turn around and go backward. Then, with 10 to go, we could split the field and half of them could go in the regular direction and half could go backward.”
Even though it’s been more than four years since the classic interview, Stewart said he’s often reminded of it.
And in all seriousness, he said, it’s frustrating as a car owner to see expen- sive vehicles torn up at Talladega.
“When you look at all four (Stewart-Haas Racing) cars after the race and they look like they’ve been to a demolition derby at the local county fair, that’s when you’re like, ‘ Something is not right with this equation,’ ” he said. “It’s a lot of money they put into these cars.”
Stewart says many teams have dedicated crewmembers for the superspeedway program because that’s what it takes to run well there. That only adds to the anger when the team’s cars get trashed.
“That’s the part that’s frustrating, is how many man- hours that go into them and then they come back and they’re destroyed — junk,” he said. “Then you think about the people driving them and you’re worried about whether they’re going to be all right. So it’s not always been fun down there.”
Stewart was speaking during a Mobil 1 event at a Rush Truck Center in Charlotte, where he helped change the oil on the No. 14 transporter that will bring his car to Talladega on Thursday.
The three- time NASCAR champion says he doesn’t do many oil changes.
“When I got to the Cup level, I never touched a wrench on a race car other than adjusting a mirror or the steering column inside the car,” he said. “If you grab a wrench and go anywhere near the car that’s not in the driver’s compartment, they get really nervous and anxious about what you’re really doing.”