Stewart Busy Doing Double-Duty Racing

Tony Stewart just loves racing.

Not only does the Winston Cup star enjoy driving his stock car, he can’t stay away from his first love--open-wheel racing.

Before heading for NASCAR, Stewart was a champion in the U.S. Auto Club’s sprint car, midget and dirt car series, as well as the Indy Racing League.

Even while establishing himself as a star in Winston Cup last year, with the best rookie season in NASCAR’s modern era, Stewart remained tied to the IRL as a team owner.

Next season, he will also be an owner in the World of Outlaws sprint car series. And that’s why Stewart will have a much busier weekend than most of the other Winston Cup drivers.

Stewart, coming off his first victory of the season last Sunday in Dover, Del., is entered in today’s Kmart 400 at Michigan Speedway. But he and some fellow Winston Cuppers will also climb aboard his Commander 690-A airplane to see the first World of Outlaws race to be held at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.

The Outlaws take to the dirt-covered, .533-mile oval on Friday and Saturday.

Stewart will make the roughly 500-mile commute from Brooklyn, Mich., to Bristol on both nights.

“It’s a sin if you don’t go to Bristol . . . and at least see what the place looks like with dirt on it,” Stewart said. “Whether it’s a success or not is still to be determined. If they never decide to do it again I want to at least say I was there when they did it.

“I wouldn’t normally jump in a jet two nights in a row and leave a Cup weekend to fly and watch Outlaws race then come back the same night. But this is kind of a special deal to watch the Outlaws at Bristol on dirt of all things. I just didn’t want to miss it.”

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BACK TO WORK: A week after announcing plans to run a limited schedule through August in order to get his racing house in order, Robby Gordon is back in Winston Cup.

He will drive today at Michigan Speedway.

Gordon, who owns and operates his own Winston Cup team along with partners Mike Held and John Menard, made the decision to run a limited schedule after struggling through the first 12 races of the season.

The team skipped last weekend’s race in Dover, Del., and spent the early part of this week with a two-day road course test and wind tunnel session.

“We’ve gone to a lighter schedule in terms of race weekends, but really the day-to-day schedule has become more intense,” said Gordon, a former open-wheel driving star trying to establish himself in the stock car series. “We’ve spent more time working on our Michigan cars because that’s an important race for a couple of reasons--and that’s not to say the other races aren’t important.

“For starters, the Michigan Speedway is in Ford’s back yard and we’d like to try and show them what we’re capable of doing. Secondly, Michigan falls into one of our focuses, which is being more competitive on the intermediate length tracks.”

Gordon said Michigan’s high-banked 2-mile oval is at least comparable to ovals ranging from 1 1/2 to 2 miles at tracks like Las Vegas, Atlanta, Texas, Charlotte, N.C., and Fontana, Calif.

“That group represents almost a third of the schedule, and they’re all high-visibility cities,” Gordon said. “We’re also bringing basically the same type of cars to those tracks. So, for us, it makes sense to learn as much as we can about these places because it’s reasonable to say what we learn at Michigan we might be able to apply elsewhere.”

Team Gordon will not travel next week to Pocono, choosing instead to pursue more testing in preparation for the Sears Point event June 25 in Sonoma, Calif.

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OVERWHELMING: Dale Jarrett, who won the Winston Cup championship last year, overpowered the field in last year’s Kmart 400.

Jarrett nearly put everyone to sleep as he took the lead on lap 43 and ran away with that win in the caution-free race. He wound up leading 150 of the 200 laps, including the final 148.

“We really weren’t that much better than everybody else,” Jarrett said. “It was just circumstances. We were out front in clean air, the car was handling perfect and there were no yellows.”

Jarrett, who hasn’t won a race this year since the season-opening Daytona 500, would like nothing better than to recreate last year on Sunday.

“Really, I don’t like boring races any more than anybody else. But I thought that was pretty exciting last year,” he said with a grin.

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STAT OF THE WEEK: There have been six different winners in the last eight Winston Cup races at Michigan. Mark Martin (August 1997 and June 1998) and Jarrett (August 1996 and June 1999) are the only repeat winners during that stretch.

End Adv for June 10-11