Tony Stewart makes final preparations for Eldora

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Zack Albert

Owner/’proud father’ jokes his job is to ‘get in (employees) way’ ahead of race

Last year’s experience in hosting NASCAR’s first national series race on dirt with a full-time staff numbering in the single digits qualified as an eye-opener for Eldora Speedway owner Tony Stewart. Even though the three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champ has the benefit of playing host once before, he says it doesn’t make the second time around a breeze.

For all the effort and the hard work from his capable employees, Stewart says his own role is clearly defined.

"My job is to show up and worry and get in their way," Stewart joked Monday, deftly handling NASCAR’s weekly teleconference as he drove through his boyhood stomping grounds of Rushville, Indiana, on the way to the half-mile track in Western Ohio. "So I’m a couple hours from there now, and I’ll get there and be a pain in their butt when I get there. I’ll act normal, I’m sure."

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Stewart and company will welcome the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series back to the historic bullring Wednesday for the second annual 1-800-CarCash Mudsummer Classic (9 p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1), the 10th of 22 races this season, and still the only national series event that veers off the more conventional paved surfaces.

The novelty of racing on dirt was just part of what made the inaugural race a rousing success. Perhaps a larger factor was the connection fans made with stock-car racing’s roots before the so-called modern era. Whatever the reason, it’s what had the track’s patrons yelling their thank-yous to Stewart from behind the catch fencing last year, long after Austin Dillon had hoisted the golden shovel as the first Eldora winner.

Though he purchased the track from legendary owner Earl Baltes in late 2004 and is credited with planting the seed for the dirt-track racing concept with NASCAR’s brass, Stewart insists that he’s simply carrying on Eldora’s tradition of hosting headline-grabbing, big-money events for sprint cars and late models alike.

"The success of Eldora isn’t at all due to what I’ve done with it, it’s due to what Earl and Berniece Baltes had done for the first 50 years of the race track," Stewart said. "He was always a promoter that was able to take ‑‑ he was willing to take — big risks and big gambles and promote big events. He didn’t promote races; he promoted big events. Basically, all we’ve had to do was follow that blueprint and that vision that Earl has always had, and that is something that’s been important to us from day one. We’ve tried to run the racetrack the way he would want to run it and he would want us to run it."

As proof, Stewart said he still consults with the 93-year-old Baltes on a regular basis.

"He’s still as big a part of Eldora as anybody. It’s one of those places that’s always been successful because of the way he ran it. I think a lot of promoters across the country, if they’d had the opportunity to be around him very much, would realize that blueprint for success."

For now, the promotion and planning remain a balancing act. The inaugural race required several one-time expenditures and improvements to bring the rural facility up to the standards mandatory for initially hosting a NASCAR national series race.

While those plans didn’t need repeating this year, it didn’t make the task at hand any less daunting.

"Anybody that thinks that putting on a single NASCAR event is easy, let’s just open the gates," Stewart said. "People think you start working I think a week ahead of time to get ready for stuff like this, and it’s been a very large, eye‑opening experience for me to see what the Eddie Gossages and … everybody at (track ownership groups) ISC and SMI and everything has to do to put on an event each week. It takes months and months of work, and so many details."

With NASCAR’s traveling circus about to descend on his Field of Dreams, Stewart says his prime concerns are the same as any track owner — weather and making sure the event goes off without a hitch. Ticket sales have been brisk, with just under 1,000 reserved seats remaining and a lawn area available for Wednesday’s walk-up crowds.

Thus far, ticket-buyers have come from 45 states, five Canadian provinces, Australia, Great Britain and Sweden to partake in the Mudsummer Classic’s second running. When Stewart isn’t worrying or, as he puts it, getting in the way, he’s able to enjoy watching another big Eldora event come together much in the way Baltes did before him.

"It’s about as close to being a proud father as I can imagine being."

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Posted on July 21, 2014 by

NASCAR Chairman and CEO: ‘the more people we’ve heard from, the better the result’

NASCAR will continue to solicit and listen to many different opinions in the garage area, NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France said, even if some of the sport’s top car owners decide to speak with one voice.

"The last thing we would want to do is not talk to everybody so we can understand where the truth lies, or the best that we can tell," France said Monday in an interview with SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. "So that’s why one voice — it’s just a bad idea."

The interview was among France’s first public comments on the Race Team Alliance, the coalition of nine Sprint Cup Series teams that announced its formation earlier this month. According to the RTA, the organization’s purpose is to "create an open forum for teams to explore areas of common interest and to work collaboratively on initiatives to help preserve, promote and grow the sport of stock car racing."

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Rob Kauffman, co-owner of Michael Waltrip Racing, is chairman of the RTA. Sprint Cup organizations participating are Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates, Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, Michael Waltrip Racing, Richard Childress Racing, Richard Petty Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, Stewart-Haas Racing and Team Penske.

As far as France is concerned, the presence of the alliance does not change the way NASCAR does business — which is to solicit multiple opinions.

"We didn’t think it was necessary, and we thought that the benefits that they would arrive at with this association would be much smaller than they do. But they’re smart guys, and so they may figure out some things that we’re not aware of. … The one thing that is central to NASCAR, though, is when you hear one voice — that would probably the worst thing that we could ever do, is to listen to one voice, even if it were a consensus voice," France said.

"In every decision that we’ve ever made that’s important, the more input, the more people we’ve heard from, the better the result. And so that will never change in the business model of NASCAR, because the ideas come from all over the place, and that’s the strength that we have. Our communications have never been better with the (manufacturers), the car companies, the team owners, drivers, and the like. We’ve just got to keep building on that and getting the best outcome that we can."

France said NASCAR will continue to deal directly with individual owners. Toward that end, he said he spoke with Rick Hendrick last week and even talked recently with Kauffman.

"That’s how we’ve historically done it. Look, they’re smart guys, there are some benefits they see in forming the RTA. We respect that. These are some of the brightest guys in business. If they think there are some real benefits, then we may not agree, but we’ll certainly respect them," France told Sirius XM.

"They’re smart guys, they’re entitled to approach their business in certain ways, and we’re going to respect that," he added. "But, we’re going to go down the road of dealing with all the team owners. Not most of them, not the big ones, all of them. And that’s the best outcome that we can get."

France cited as an example the development of the Generation-6 Sprint Cup car, which was the result of an industry-wide effort. Its predecessor, the vehicle introduced in 2007 and formerly known as the Car of Tomorrow, did not succeed in part because not enough people were involved, he added.

"When we don’t get the input from every team owner, not a consensus among the big guys … we always miss something," he said. "We now know that better than ever. Look at the original car that I said was a mistake on my part; not because of any one thing, but because we didn’t communicate back in ’07. … And you roll the clock forward, and you look at how we collaborated with the car manufacturers and all the team owners. We got a much better outcome from doing that, and we know that. If we ever drift away from that, we need to get right back to it. So all voices need to be heard, and that’s exactly what we need to do."

— France said the movement toward a new Sprint Cup engine package is being accelerated, "but it’s a ways off," he added. "… The cost will be a huge deciding factor on where we end up and how fast we can go. But, we have got to lower the cost to supply engines. It’s too high, and it’s not where we need to be. So we are hard at work to try and accelerate that for the future."

— France also added that the 2015 Sprint Cup schedule is on track to be released in September, and again hinted that changes are afoot. "It’s not going to be a dramatic change, but there will be some things that are a little different," he said. "But that’s not unusual. We do that. You come back to moving dates around, we don’t do a lot of it, but we do a little of it from time to time, and this will be one of those moments."

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