Every week, at every race track on the Sprint Cup circuit, Tony Stewart is asked the same questions.
Are you surprised by how well your team has started?
How do you like being an owner?
Have things gone the way you thought they would?
What’s been the key to the quick start?
And every week, Stewart patiently—well, usually—gives the same replies, over and over.
I’ll cut some slack to reporters who cover only their local track and see Stewart once or twice a year. But the national reporters are a whole other thing. They ask Stewart many of those same inane questions every week.
It’s almost as if they’re trying to catch him in a lie, that becoming a Sprint Cup team owner really is the pits, that he hates being one, wishes he never did it and wishes he could go back to Joe Gibbs Racing.
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All of which is, obviously, untrue.
Sure, Stewart might have lost a bit of sleep as he still tries to get full funding for teammate Ryan Newman’s car.
Sure, Stewart has a lot more responsibility on his plate, and maybe it has caused him to indulge in another kind of plate for comfort and get a bit out of shape in the process. We know he loves food.
And, sure, Stewart might have dark hair on top of his head, but his off-and-on beard tells a significant truth: He’s sprouting some telltale stubble that is becoming more and more interspersed—OK, I’ll be kind and call it “highlighted”—with some obvious grey and white follicles.
That’s part of the price you pay for being the guy in charge, the guy that has to do most of the worrying. Look at former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush—they came into office with salt-and-pepper hair and left looking as if they had aged 30 years in just eight.
Being Tony Stewart is not fun and games. He’s one of the most competitive racers you’ll ever find. But he’s also one of the most astute racers-turned-businessmen in the game.
He knew what he was getting into with what was then Haas/CNC Racing—now known as Stewart-Haas Racing. To get his name first on the front door of the company, he was savvy. He didn’t even have to invest a penny at the outset; he simply allowed use of his name in exchange for a full 50 percent share.
With that kind of business acumen, maybe President Obama should put Stewart in charge of the financial crisis. I bet he could get some things fixed, given how tough a businessman and negotiator he is—just like his business manager, Eddie Jarvis.
Together, Stewart and Jarvis have built an empire that is not only flourishing in some tough times inside NASCAR and out, they’ve also found a way to build for the future. When the economy comes back, Stewart-Haas will be positioned to become one of the top teams in the business.
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