Stewart’s off-track and on-track aggression part of a master plan

Stewart’s off-track and on-track aggression part of a master plan

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

(September 20, 2011)

JOLIET, Ill.—It all makes sense now.

 Tony Stewart walked into the Chicagoland Speedway media center, fresh from the traditional hat dance in victory lane, surveyed the reporters waiting to question him and, by way of opening remarks after his victory in the Geico 400, took a reporter to task for a question posed to crew chief Darian Grubb.

 “This room’s still full of bigger idiots than I am—and that’s on the record,” Stewart said.

 Stewart has been rough on the media lately, and his salvo at Chicagoland was merely the latest episode in an antagonistic relationship that surfaced at Richmond a week earlier and reappeared on Friday before the first race in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

 Fridays at the racetrack are the designated days for what are quaintly referred to as “hauler chats.” Drivers stand behind their haulers—or sit at a dais in the media center—and answer questions from reporters. Many of the questions are functionally identical to the questions the drivers answered the week before.

 Most drivers reiterate answers with good grace. Not Stewart.

 At the racetrack, Stewart has one focus—driving his racecar—and any intrusion on that specific purpose is an unwanted annoyance. That’s why a question Stewart may answer politely on a media day away from the track may earn a scathing critique and a dunce cap behind his hauler.

 In light of his victory at Chicagoland, and the way he achieved it, it’s clear that Stewart’s loutish, belligerent behavior is part of a master plan designed to produce a third Cup championship for the driver known as “Smoke.”

 Snacking on the occasional reporter is like psychological Viagra for the 40-year-old Stewart. Confrontation keeps his blood up and brings out the aggression in a driver whose prodigious talents are unquestioned.

 Aggression was certainly the watchword in Monday’s rain-delayed Cup race, as Stewart tested the edge of the envelope on the racetrack. As he drove from his 26th starting position to the front of the field, Stewart found little courtesy from his fellow competitors.

 With clowns to the left of him and jokers to the right, as Stewart might put it, he abandoned caution and the customary give and take drivers expect from each other and charged to the lead.

 “A couple times, we were three wide and through the middle and in positions that we didn't want to be in and that we typically wouldn't put ourselves in,” Stewart said. “But the way guys were racing, you had to take chances. You had to put yourself in bad spots.

 “Everybody was putting each other in bad spots during the day. And you just had to … some guys in particular you just had to get through and get away from them.”

 In all seriousness, whether or not confrontations with reporters kept Stewart’s meter pegged, an aggressive Stewart is a dangerous Stewart, as far as the other Chase competitors are concerned.

 So don’t be surprised if you see some more barbecues of the Fourth Estate during the Chase.

 It just might work.