tony stewarts nickname origin? [Archive]

Daveroo

July 23rd, 2013, 10:11

fine then....its from his days in the USAC cars ,non-winged USAC sprints and midgets,he was known to smoke the right rear on the pavement in just about all four turns..hence "smoke"

but i loved to watch a guy here in norcal,at chico..silver dollar...i dont recal his name,but the track would become dry/slick and lay down rubber,and then he would come off 2 and we could see a blue haze coming from the right rear,at first people were sayig to was a fuel mixture problem,since at that time the headers just dumped out right in front of the wheel,most of us didnt even run the trumpet plugs (as we called them) the baffles...but then he would head on down the back stretch and the blue haze would leave..then return in 3/4...ofcourse it happens all the time now...but in those days it was very uncoman to see....we ran wet tackey tracks,power got to the ground without alot of wheel spin,sometimes we could carry the left front all the way around the track.......that in itself was as much fun as racing...lol...there was one night we had 30+ street stocks,,40 something super stocks,and 8 sprint cars,and three of those got wrecked in the heat race and they loaded and went home before the A coughs main...the 5 of us left...loosely put...were goofballs....we did in fact race,but it became a "who can carry the left front through the dogleg the highest?"this was back at grass valley,it was a true dogleg back then..a small pocono ,and the inside burm at the center of the dogleg (turn) was about 3 feet high,in that yellow hobby stock ive shown..id use this burm to set the car in the corn,you come out of 4,down past the flag stand,then slip up and over the dogleg burm and it would pitch that big car sideways and line me up perfectly for a full throttle turn 4 exit,i could pass 3-4 cars at a time with that,and keep ahead of em into 3..

well the sprint cars were differant,you tried to set the car with the burm in that,youd wrinkle wing,guy name dan flew the wheel fence twice..lol..but back to this 5 car A main,myself,paul,andy,butch and chuck,,all good friends decided before the race to have the contest,butch was on the pole,as he was slowest,i was outside backrow,,id set fast time and won the dash..so id settle to the back,andy just in front of me,and we would watch the scoreboard until 5 to go...then race for the win...well we had fun trying to "fly the left front" over part of the burm...wanted to have the wheel in the air and not touch it,and if you spun,you just went to the back...well we ran 20 laps without a problem,i looked up at lap 19,so i knew butch would do something to try an cheat or something (he was like that)..as we can out of 4 and crossed in front of the flagman,suddenly i just saw a wall of dust,and then loud metalic crunching sounds...

have you ever hear an engine eat itself at full RPM?......times that by 4...four engines i mean.....when the dirty/wet dust settled...i was upside down..wing wrapped around my cockpit escape routes...oil and fuel dripping all over me....and i hear andy say......maNN he did it again.....bucth had caused the crash..yet he was the only car with out a scratch on it....when we had all run the hobby stocks together...he would do it then too...

but as it turned out.....that night was talked about for years after.....lol..