Tony Stewart may never race sprint cars again

“I would say it’s going to be a long time before you ever see me in a sprint car again, if ever. I don’t have any desire to get back in a car,” Stewart said. “If I had the option to go right now to a race, I wouldn’t. I don’t even know when I’ll go to a sprint car race again to watch. I can promise you it’s going to be a long time before you ever see me back in one.”

Stewart made his name on dirt tracks growing up in the racing community. Earlier in the year, there was plenty of anticipation around when he would get back to racing on them following his 2013 broken leg that kept him sidelined for the final 15 races of the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season.

Stewart acknowledged to the AP that he had weighed giving up sprint car racing following that injury.

“It’s hurt for 16 months to sit and be scrutinized for it and to try to give back to a sport that you love, and every time you turn around, you’ve got to constantly defend yourself for doing something and trying to support something that you believe in and care about,” he said.”

According to the report, legal counsel has advised Stewart not to describe what he remembers about the Aug. 9 crash in upstate New York.

“It’s just been a really tough six weeks,” he said. ‘I went to go have fun for a night, and that’s not what ended up happening.”

Stewart said at some point, he hopes the Ward family would want to hear what happened from his perspective.

“I would hope they understand — maybe they do, maybe they don’t, maybe they never will — that I do care,” Stewart said. “I’ve tried to be respectful of their process of grieving and not push myself on them. I’m sure they have things that they want to know what happened and I think it’s important for them at some point to hear it from my point.”

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