Tony Stewart's Mortal and He Needed To Learn It

Safety workers load injured Tony Stewart into ambulance

The ever-stubborn Tony Stewart stood surrounded by a group of media and defiantly didn’t seem too concerned about his mortality.

“You mortals have got to learn. You guys need to watch more sprint car videos and stuff. It was not a big deal. It's starting to get annoying this week about that, so that was just an average sprint car wreck. When they wreck they get upside down like that. That was not a big deal." – Tony Stewart speaking to reporters at Pocono Raceway last Friday after flipping his sprint car twice in two weeks.

Less than four days later Stewart flipped his sprint car once again; this time at a dirt track in Oskaloosa, Iowa breaking his leg – both his tibia and fibula – and was transported to a local hospital where he underwent surgery. Two days later Stewart remains in a hospital waiting on a second surgery. The timetable for his return to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is undetermined, with many experts saying he could likely miss the remainder of the season. Despite his win earlier this season at Dover International Raceway and him currently being in one of the two wild card spots for the NASCAR Chase for the Championship playoffs he is certainly going to miss the Chase by falling out of the top 20 in points by missing multiple races.

I wonder if Tony Stewart still thinks he’s immortal.

Racer’s race is a phrase I’ve heard many times this week regarding Stewart both before and after the incident resulting in his injury. I understand this and when the word “racer” is thrown around it is Tony Stewart who comes to mind first, with all due respect to great champions like Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon. However, I also understand that the more times a racer races the more times he puts himself at risk for injury or worse, especially when the extracurricular races he’s running are in equipment or at tracks that are seemingly more dangerous than the one’s he runs and runs at in his full-time job. It is the business of the driver, his team owner and his sponsors as to whether or not he should or shouldn’t run extra races throughout the season – and either decision is perfectly fine by me. All parties know the risks and should weigh them heavily when deciding. Stewart’s decision to run all of these races on the side is not something I would want to see him do if I were his car owner, which he happens to be for himself, or his sponsors, but that’s ultimately his business.

The part of Stewart’s “that was no big deal” quote to the press that I took umbrage too was “you mortals have got to learn.” Stewart has been no stranger to insert-foot-in-mouth comments over his career in motorsports and his hatred and condescension toward the media has been a recurring theme over his years in NASCAR. However, the term “mortals” – one that was likely flippantly used without much thought – came off as incredibly offensive given the recent sprint car accidents that took the lives of fellow NASCAR driver Jason Leffler and National Sprint Car Hall of Famer Kramer Williamson, who granted died after Stewart’s comments were made. I wonder if Leffler even crossed Stewart’s mind during his “mortals” comment? I wonder if Williamson crossed his mind in the days after? They should have.

Stewart knows all too well that wrecks like the ones he was in and walked away from and the one he was in that left him on a stretcher and on his way to a hospital bed are more than just “no big deal.” He knows that every time he puts on his helmet, straps in his belts and fires his engine that it could be the last time he ever does so. All racers know this. Most don’t seem to like to talk about it. However, I’ve never seen a racer as defiantly careless about it.

Tony Stewart will return to NASCAR, knowing him, probably sooner than many people think he will. Also, knowing him, he’ll probably return to sprint car racing at local dirt tracks around the country, too. He’ll probably even end up going end over end again at some point in one of the two. I say good for him. He’s proven time after time over the years that he’s one tough sonuvabitch. It’s a good part of his allure. It’s part of what makes him an all-time great.

I just hope this time spent in a hospital bed and out of the driver’s seat will get him thinking about stupid remarks like “you mortals have got to learn” and “it’s not a big deal.” Stewart was reminded Monday night in Iowa of his mortality – hopefully it’ll take.         

Norm Benning - Modern Day Last American Hero?

NASCAR returned to dirt track racing for the first time in over 40 years on Wednesday night at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. The night was a huge success for NASCAR in terms of fan excitement, ticket sales, television ratings, social media output, etc. I don’t have the exact numbers, but I’m willing to bet this race was the most-watched race in the almost 20 year history of the Camping World Truck Series.

The race itself was entertaining and surprisingly low on carnage, with the truck series regulars picking up the art of racing on dirt without having too many wrecks or cautions. Unsurprisingly the race was won by one of the so-called “dirt ringers,” though one who also had much experience and success in the truck series, 2011 series champion Austin Dillon.

However, the most exciting part of racing on the dirt at Eldora came before the main event, during the qualifying race called the LCQ or last chance qualifier. Only 30 trucks would make the main event. Twenty-five had already locked themselves in via owner’s points and five heat races. That left 10 trucks fighting for the final five spots into the race. This lead to one of the most epic racing battles I’ve ever seen in NASCAR period, and believe it or not it wasn’t for first place, but merely fifth place – the last position that would qualify a driver into the main.

The battle was between two guys who regularly compete in the truck series, but with underfunded equipment that is often forced to start and park and almost never can compete with the big boys of the series. Those drivers were 61-year old veteran Norm Benning and 29-year old Clay Greenfield. The battle lasted basically the entire 15-lap LCQ, but really got exciting in the final few laps with Benning realizing he had to hold off Greenfield to make the show and Greenfield doing everything he could, included potentially wrecking Benning to also make the show. The two rubbed and scraped and made so much contact that their trucks would almost be spent by the end of the LCQ, but it didn’t really matter because the winner would go on and the loser would go home. It’s an image and excitement that my words can’t truly describe, so you must go to YouTube and watch it for yourself. 

Benning eventually held off Greenfield in one of the most riveting final laps of racing I have ever seen and again it was only for fifth place to make the big race. His intensity and hard driving in the LCQ just goes to show the casual NASCAR fan that even these guys who struggle to make races and compete with higher funded teams are true wheelmen. Norm Benning is the true American underdog story who has worked his butt off for years to simply get to where he is now. He may have only finished 26^th out of 30 drivers in the main race, but he put on the best show of the night just getting into it. He also got his name trending nationwide on Twitter … not bad for an old vet who most had never heard of going into the night.