NHRA driver Tony Stewart was recently featured in an online interview with former FOX Sports broadcaster Kenny Wallace’s podcast, The Kenny Conversation. During the episode, Stewart opened up about the things he would change about his past.
The 50-year-old former stock car racing driver debuted in the NASCAR Cup Series in 1999 at Daytona International Speedway. Since then, he had his intentions clear and wanted to secure championship titles. Stewart clinched his first win in his debut season at Richmond Raceway and never looked back. He then won three Cup Series championship titles in 2002, 2005, and 2011. Additionally, he secured 49 wins, 308 top-10 finishes, and 15 pole positions in 618 starts in his 18-year stint in the series.
Recalling the same, Tony Stewart told Kenny Wallace that throughout the majority of his career, he was “intense” with racing and would love to go back to treat “people better.”
“I was so intense with racing. I was so on edge all the time. There were a lot of things I didn’t like about NASCAR. A lot of things I didn’t like how they did things. I didn’t like how a lot of it was done. But while I was there, I mean, all I cared about was winning racism. What we had to do, and I was not a good person to people. I just wasn’t,” he said [00:50].
Stewart has been competing in the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) after his wife, Leah Pruett, announced her temporary break from the series on December 7, 2025.
“It’s not like what you and I were used to”: When Tony Stewart discussed the difference between the NASCAR and NHRA series
In 2024, former three-time Cup Series champion Tony Stewart was featured on NASCAR legend Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast and touched upon the differences between NASCAR and NHRA.
Stewart began by comparing the timing of races in both series. He pointed out that stock car racing series races generally last around three to four hours, whereas NHRA series races wrap up in three to four seconds.
“It’s not like what you and I were used to, where we’ve got a three-and-a-half-hour race,” Stewart said. “We’ve got six or eight pit stops throughout the day, and we have three, four, five hundred laps to get the job done. If we make a mistake, we’ll fix it.”
Tony Stewart also elucidated the difference between the NHRA dragsters and stock car racing series cars. He highlighted that NHRA dragsters pump around 11,000 horsepower and are built to run in a straight line for a few seconds. Meanwhile, stock car racing series cars produce around 650 horsepower and are built to withstand endurance to complete mile-long races on oval tracks.
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Edited by Samya Majumdar
