Waiting for Stewart

It turns out that Tony Stewart isn’t nearly as fat in person as he has been appearing to be on recent race day television coverage. Sure he’s gained some pounds over the last couple of seasons but he doesn’t actually tote around that Orson Welles sized girth when out of his driving uniform.

After today’s show Tim Andrews, Kelly Brown and I headed out to The Home Depot for a promised interview with the two-time and reigning Nextel Cup champion. Given the fact that he had just broken a bone in his lower right shoulder blade area I half-expected him to be a no-show. But at the appointed time he strolled up, right arm in a sling- left arm ready to glad hand anyone thrown in front of him by his home improvement team sponsor.

Such is the reality of the economics of racing. A competitive Nascar program now costs upwards of 20-25 million dollars a year and good corporate sponsors, flush with cash are few and far between. So although he won’t be driving this weeks full race (he’ll start in order to be eligible for the points the car will accrue, then turn it over to Ricky Rudd during the first caution flag), he is still willing to fly to Atlanta in order to fulfill a corporate obligation.

We thought we might get lucky and squeeze out an early one-on-one when he first arrived, but the corporate greeters immediately descended, and soon in-store activities got started- so we camped in the parking lot to await our turn. When he reemerged we jumped up to be informed that we would get very little time in between live satellite interviews he would be doing with a number of local TV stations around the country. I’m not bitching, it’s the way these things tend to go and we were participating in a media gangbang to begin with.

After wrapping up an appearance with some Seattle news-folk his people waved us in and Kelly and I made our way onto the makeshift television set with a mini-disc recorder and a long list of questions we didn’t have time for. The whole thing probably lasted for about four and a half minutes but he was in a good mood and the interview went well.

I think most race fans would be genuinely surprised at what a nice and pleasant guy Tony Stewart can be. He has a short fuse, but if it doesn’t get lit he radiates a rather happy go lucky spirit. I asked him about the injury, the plan for Dover, let him get his Powerade plug in and asked him who he was rooting for on the last lap of the Indy 500- then I got the heavy duty wrap sign from his media rep because Tony was due for another live TV shot in some other part of the country. But wait, I hadn’t asked about the monkey.

So I asked about the monkey and I left.

It was a short but enjoyable interview.