Rushville Rocket Rings Number Two!

Congratulations to Tony Stewart and everyone at Joe Gibbs Racing! Tony only finished 15th in the race today, but his utter dominance over the last 20 races of the season netted the Indiana driver his second championship.

I've been a Stewart fan since before he came to NASCAR. He was, and is, a racer through-and-through. He was winning titles by the handful in USAC cars in the midwest, then took a turn in IRL cars. His first taste of stock car racing came in equipment fielded by Harry Ranier. That's right, unlike many of today's hotshoes, Tony didn't get a development contract from a powerhouse NASCAR team while he was still in high school. He was offered a ride by a fledgling Busch Series operation. Ranier, a former Cup owner, re-entered NASCAR by fielding a part-time Busch Series team. His cars weren't the fastest on the circuit, but he hired Tony, and Tony made the most of his opportunity. He drove the heck out of Ranier's unsponsored cars.

I'll never forget this Busch race at Talladega in 1996. I'm pretty sure it was Tony's first superspeedway NASCAR race. Impressively, Tony raced with the leaders, but eventually his inexperience caught up to him and he crashed in Talladega's tri-oval, also taking out Busch-dominator Mark Martin. Mark wasn't happy, but he knew Tony was going to be something special.

Offers began trickling in from top NASCAR team, but it was Joe Gibbs who netted the talented driver. Stewart drove in a bunch of Busch races for JGR over the next couple of seasons, before getting the promotion to the Cup series in 1999, at the age of 28. He rewrote the rookie record books by winning an unprecedented three races in his first year and finishing fourth in points.

Three years later, Tony won his first title, and again three years later, he's won another! In his Cup career, he's never finished lower than 7th in the final standings. That's a credit to his crew chief, Greg Zipadelli, everyone at JGR, and sponsor Home Depot for sticking by him through various tumult in recent years. Tony's endured personal ups and downs: he's been placed on probation by NASCAR multiple times, he's bumped photographers, he's knocked a tape recorder out of a reporter's hand and kicked it under a truck, and he's had no shortage of dustups with other drivers. But he races. And he wins. And he's one of the best I've ever seen. Congrats to the man, the Rushville Rocket.