Fire still burns for Stewart
Tony Stewart was convalescing from a nasty wreck, and he was depressed because, as he cracked, “if you live with your mom and stepdad for a month, you’ll be depressed,” when he took a phone call he was sure was a prank.
His buddies had taken turns messing with Stewart, saying they were A.J. Foyt or Mario Andretti, before he finally stopped answering the phone. Mom, though, still picked up. Pam Boas took a late-night call and passed the phone to her son.
“Sure, here we go, which one of these (jerks) is it now,” Stewart said. “So they hand the phone over to me, and I’m like, ‘Hey, Joe, how the hell are you.’ He goes, ‘Tony?’ And I’m like, oh my God, it really is Joe Gibbs.”
It was indeed the real Joe Gibbs on the line, and the NFL coach-turned-NASCAR owner was trying to strike a deal with Stewart to join his race team. They would eventually meet in Indianapolis — a negotiation that somehow included Don Meredith and Stewart’s bluff to run a Top Fuel car — and lay out the details of the contract. Because of some long-distance phone tag, the finishing touches became a bit more complicated.
“I couldn’t find him lots of times,” Gibbs said. “I would call the girlfriend, and she would tell me where he was and everything. So about the third time I called the girlfriend, she goes, ‘That no good, rotten — don’t you ever call this house again.’ I went, well, that was done.”
Those calls in the late 1990s sparked a lifelong connection that has stretched through even more girlfriends for Stewart, NASCAR championships won together, busted TVs, tough love, media dustups, grief, a professional breakup and two more big milestones coming up fast: They will face each other as owners Sunday in the winner-take-all title race, followed by a 2020 induction in the same NASCAR Hall of Fame class.
Heck, Stewart might even spruce up for the occasion. He dressed Friday in a short sleeve, gray button-down shirt emblazoned with logos and a black Ford hat. Gibbs wore a white, button-down shirt and black sports coat, more fitting for a night out at a swanky Miami Beach joint than a stroll through the garage.
“This is how you dress if you have one car in the championship,” Stewart joked before he turned to
Gibbs. “And this is how you dress when you have three. I walked in and I’m like, are you going to court today?”
Come Sunday, it’s StewartHaas Racing’s Kevin Harvick vs. the Joe Gibbs Racing stable of Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch.
In the pits, it’s Coach vs. Smoke.
“To be able to compete against him for a championship is a really cool deal,” Stewart said. “This whole year and everything with the Hall of Fame, all of it is really special to be doing a lot of this with Joe.”
Beating Gibbs would feel pretty good, too.
Stewart took many of the lessons learned racing for a decade for Gibbs with him when he left and teamed with Gene Haas to start their eponymous race team in 2009. Stewart won Cup titles for Gibbs in 2002 and 2005; and one as an owner/driver in 2011.
The R-rated Stewart, who is 48, learned how to lead a team from the Godfearing Gibbs, 30 years his senior.
Stewart rarely resembles the notoriously gruff driver known as Smoke, whose prickly mood put everyone on edge. He threw punches, ripped NASCAR and was one of the most feared drivers in the field.