There are celebrities who show up to drag races, put on a helmet, and let someone else do the thinking. They\u2019re good for a photo-op and a press release and not much else. Tony Stewart is not that kind of celebrity. What Stewart has done since committing to NHRA nitro competition \u2013 not just as a driver, but as a team owner building a program from the ground up \u2013 is something fundamentally different, and people inside the sport are starting to take notice.<\/p>\n
Matt Hagan, a man who doesn\u2019t throw compliments around carelessly, framed it as clearly as anyone could. Hagan would know better than most. He drives the Dodge\/\/SRT Hellcat Funny Car for Tony Stewart Racing, Stewart\u2019s own team. When your driver looks at the man who signs the checks and says that\u2019s who this sport needs to attach itself to, it\u2019s not flattery. It\u2019s an honest assessment from someone who watches him work every day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI really think that if I was a fan on the outside looking in, it\u2019s like, that\u2019s the next John Force,\u201d Hagan said. \u201cThat\u2019s who NHRA needs to attach themselves to and figure out how long Tony wants to do this and really rally behind that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stewart also owns the Top Fuel dragster that his wife, Leah Pruett, currently drives. He stepped into the car full-time last year while she sat out, then passed the seat back and took the opportunity to drive for Richard Freeman\u2019s Elite Motorsports team this season. That means he\u2019s now both a competitor on the track and a team owner running cars against himself. It\u2019s a situation that has no real precedent in this sport, and speaks to how seriously Stewart has gone all-in on drag racing rather than treating it as a side project.<\/p>\n
The comparison to Force isn\u2019t casual. It\u2019s the highest bar that exists in the sport: a man whose name alone has carried the promotional weight of an entire professional class for decades. And Hagan\u2019s point is clear \u2013 Stewart brings that same star power. He arrives at NHRA national events with a fanbase built across NASCAR, IndyCar, sprint car racing, and a Hall of Fame career that touches virtually every corner of American motorsports. That crossover appeal doesn\u2019t transfer automatically, but Stewart has made it transfer because he does the work.<\/p>\n
Richard Freeman, who has spent years building championship teams and watching the business of drag racing up close, has seen what that name does in rooms where it previously couldn\u2019t get a return call. He\u2019s had those conversations with Stewart \u2013 late-night, off the record, honest assessments of what it means to be able to say his name to a Fortune 500 company and watch the room change.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The late Don Schumacher put it simply when the subject of Stewart\u2019s involvement first came up in a conversation with Hagan: \u201cNot everybody knows who Don Schumacher is, but they know who Tony Stewart is.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what strikes the people around him most isn\u2019t the name recognition. It\u2019s the consistency. Stewart treats each crew guy the same way he treats the CEO of a sponsor company. He shows up, digs in, and doesn\u2019t look down on anyone in the building.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just a normal guy,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cHe\u2019s a racer. He\u2019s like Matt, he\u2019s like Erica [Enders], he\u2019s like all the rest of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stewart doesn\u2019t have a title that says ambassador or spokesman. He has something better \u2013 authenticity. And every time he describes what this sport actually feels like to someone who\u2019s never experienced it, he does more recruiting for drag racing than any campaign NHRA has ever run.<\/p>\n
Stewart himself articulated the responsibility that comes with his platform, and the thing he genuinely wants fans who have never seen a nitro car to understand. The first time he stood close to a Top Fuel car on the track, he felt sick just standing there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI literally felt my insides move,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cI\u2019ve been in motorsports for 47 years. I\u2019ve never been around anything that ever made my insides move and made me car sick \u2013 and I wasn\u2019t moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
That story, told to new fans at the rope, told to NASCAR audiences, told anywhere people will listen, is exactly the kind of authentic, unfiltered recruitment tool that no marketing budget can manufacture. It\u2019s real. It happened to him. And it happens to every first-time attendee who gets close enough to feel what this sport truly entails.<\/p>\n
Stewart\u2019s answer to what winning looks like a year from now was equally clear-eyed: get the Elite Motorsports Pro Stock program back to the front, keep building the Top Fuel program, and fight for a championship in both categories. But the larger mission is to continue proving that drag racing can grow, can attract new audiences, can sustain Fortune 500 partners. He\u2019s racing. He\u2019s building something bigger. And he\u2019s doing both at the same time.<\/p>\n
The post Tony Stewart Is Drag Racing\u2019s Most Powerful Recruiter, and He Doesn\u2019t Even Realize It<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are celebrities who show up to drag races, put on a helmet, and let someone else do the thinking. They\u2019re good for a photo-op and a press release and not much else. Tony Stewart is not that kind of celebrity. What Stewart has done since committing to NHRA nitro competition \u2013 not just as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}