RUTLAND, Wis. — As if a 36-race NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule isn’t grueling enough, Tony Stewart spent his spare time doing even more racing Tuesday night with a couple of other Cup regulars.
The two-time Cup champion spent the night with series leader Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth competing in a super late-model race at Madison International Speedway, a half-mile asphalt oval in this town near Kenseth’s hometown of Cambridge.
Stewart said it took a bit of time to convince his Cup team owner, Joe Gibbs, to allow him to dabble with racing on days away from the Cup circuit, but Gibbs realizes it makes his driver happy.
“The great thing about Joe Gibbs is that he lets us race. He knows this is what we want to do,” said Stewart, who is in his 10th season in the Cup series and won titles in 2002 and 2005. “And this is something he was against at first. But I think he understands the importance to us as drivers and being able to get out. We could be getting in all kinds of trouble doing other stuff, but we’d rather go racing.”
Stewart estimates he will compete in approximately 15 extracurricular races outside his full-time job during the 2008 season. Most of the events are late-model events on dirt tracks, and a handful of winged sprint car and asphalt oval races.
Kenseth and Busch said they’ll compete in five additional races outside their normal schedules. At the Cup level, Busch is Stewart’s teammate and in his first season working at Joe Gibbs Racing.
Kenseth, the 2003 Cup champion and 1994 late-model champ at Madison International Speedway, runs particularly well on the track where he honed his driving skills. He’s collected 26 feature victories in his career at MIS, including three of seven wins since 2003.
Veteran racer Steve Carlson notched his fourth super late-model victory Tuesday night at MIS, one spot ahead of Kenseth, who settled for second after failing to get past Carlson on a restart with 12 laps to go.
Carlson was the 2007 champion of the 2007 Whelen All-American Series, a points competition among local level racers around the country, and is a nine-time ARTGO Series champion.
Busch started ninth and finished 12th. Stewart, who finished 16th after starting ninth, struggled with a loose car throughout the event and was shuffled to the back of the field after being spun out by Chris Wimmer on lap 39.
Stewart competes at MIS as a favor to Kenseth, who in turn has made appearances the past two years at Eldora Speedway in New Weston, Ohio. Stewart owns the half-mile dirt track that drew 16 Cup drivers three weeks ago in a late-model race won by its track owner.
“The good thing is we get to race tonight and have fun and not worry about points and not worry about doing this or doing that in obligations that we have on a Cup weekend,” said Stewart, who is 500 points behind Busch in 11th place in the Chase for the Sprint Cup standings.
“We get to come here tonight, have fun, race in front of a crowd we never get to see out on the Cup weekends and do it in an atmosphere that’s just back to basics.”
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