Moonlighting in professional racing comes with some risk

Tony Stewart has assumed or has had many roles foisted upon him in two decades as a NASCAR driver, driver/owner, and after retiring last season, simply owner.

Among them is chief practitioner and defender of moonlighting, as the three-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion has both enjoyed and suffered heavily for his indulgence in other forms of racing part-time, specifically sprint cars. In racing the high-powered, bedeviling machines, the first driver to win the USAC Triple Crown has maintained a connection to a sport that underpins his life and career.

But not without consequences. He broke a tibia and fibula in a sprint car race in Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 2013, requiring multiple surgeries and missing the last 15 races of the Cup season. In 2014, he struck and killed competitor Kevin Ward Jr., as Ward approached Stewart’s car under caution at Canandaigua, N.Y. Stewart missed three races regrouping, and a civil suit remains unresolved.

Stewart has earned his opinions on the topic, which remains fresh as Cup points leader Kyle Larson continues his 25-race sprint car campaign amid his breakout season and following Dave Steele’s death in March. His death was the third of a former NASCAR driver in that form of racing since Jason Leffler in 2013.

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“I’ll make it easy,” Stewart said, leaning forward from a bench seat in his motor coach at Texas Motor Speedway. “You have the same opportunity to get hurt in a street car as you do in a race car, any type of race car. Why it’s a debate I will never know.

“I got really mad at [long-time team owner] Joe Gibbs one day when he was arguing the same point, saying ‘I don’t want you in anything but [Cup].’ I said, ‘If you’re that worried about me getting hurt, why don’t you put me in a room that has padded walls and a mattress on the floor so I don’t even fall out of bed at night? And then just wrap me in bubble wrap and ship me to the race track so you know I’m safe when I get there?’ Anything can happen at any time.”

As if to prove Stewart’s point, Larson was involved in a minor traffic incident leaving Auto Club Speedway after winning his second Cup race on March 26. He was not hurt.

Cup driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. — a former winner in USAC National Sprint and Midget cars for Tony Stewart Racing before signing with current team Roush Fenway Racing — had hoped to compete in an event at the dirt track adjacent to Texas Motor Speedway last weekend, but “some things fell apart,” he said. The two-time Xfinity Series champion said he would like to increase his participation after team owner Jack Roush asked him to step away from racing sprint cars in 2013-14. He has no restrictions now, he said.

“First off, he wanted me to focus on the Cup car when I first moved to Cup in ’13, so I didn’t race any sprint cars, except in the offseason. I ran some midgets,” Stenhouse Jr. said. “And then in ‘14 and ’15, I was going to run some, and he asked me to take a couple years off. … So as soon as two years was up, I said, ‘Hey Jack, a couple years is up since you’ve asked me that.’

“For me, I feel going to race sprint cars keeps you really sharp. Things happen fast, the track changes and you have to stay on top of the track and hit your marks right. I wish I could do it a lot more often, especially since I don’t get to run the Xfinity cars as much as some of the guys.”

NASCAR teams commonly deal with driver requests to compete in outside competition on an individual basis. RFR president Steve Newmark said his team has no set policy as long as outside racing doesn’t “detract or distract from their preparations in NASCAR.”

“I think in a perfect world, from out of self-interest, we would rather drivers just focus on NASCAR,” Newmark said. “But the reality of it is these guys have the drive and the competitiveness and it’s just part of what’s made them so good at what they do. And so we don’t have a formal policy on it. It’s more ad hoc, but Jack has historically allowed his drivers to do what they’re passionate about, so our contracts don’t have a lot of the restrictions that, for example, NFL contracts would have.”

The Indianapolis 500 became the focus of some moonlighting Wednesday when McLaren-Honda announced it would field two-time Formula 1 champion Fernando Alonso in the race in conjunction with Andretti Autosport. Alonso, slogging through a dreadful F1 season, will skip the Monaco Grand Prix to make his first IndyCar start.

Larson’s father, Mike, said there has been pushback from Ganassi officials over his son’s sprint car ambitions. Chip Ganassi told USA TODAY Sports that he was concerned but has allowed Larson to compete in 25 races this season, all of which should be complete before the Cup playoffs begin in the fall.

Stewart took a hiatus from sprint car racing after the Ward incident and suffered a compression fracture in his back in an early 2016 off-road incident. That crash cost him the first eight races of his final Cup season, but he returned to sprint cars this season with a possible 80-race itinerary.

In a series where drivers have injured themselves in such odd ways as cutting their feet on oyster shells while jet skiing (Scott Riggs, 2006) or breaking bones in their feet playing Frisbee (Carl Edwards, 2009), defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson could be seen as taking unneeded risks with the amount of time he skis. Seven-time Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher was severely injured in a 2013 skiing accident in the French Alps.

But Johnson, who in 2006 broke a wrist being launched from a golf cart, said that he manages his risks and needs an outlet as to not “go all Carl Edwards” and leave racing prematurely.

“We have to live our lives,” said Johnson, who has won the Cup seven times. “We didn’t develop these out-of-control tendencies in a race car by sitting in a rubber room playing chess. We’ve got to live our lives. I say all that because at some point somebody will get hurt and I just don’t want there to be an overreaction.”

Neither does Stewart. His view didn’t change as an owner, as he claims he was “100 percent all-in” on Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kurt Busch contesting the Indianapolis 500 for Andretti Autosport in 2014. He returned to Charlotte that afternoon for his day job in the Coca-Cola 600.

“The people who don’t want you to do it are selfish, they’re selfish for their reasons,” Stewart said. “And I love Joe Gibbs. If not for Joe Gibbs, I would not be here. I wouldn’t have race tracks, be a car owner. I never would have done that without Joe, and he was one of the most influential people in my life.

“But I will fight him to the day I die on this topic. If I want to race cars, I’m going to go race. He’s not worried about me, he’s worried about how it affects him, and not just him but the whole organization, all the people that work on that car and all that. But ultimately, we’ve got to do what’s right for us.”