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Drivers sensitive to Stewart's struggles to control temper

Tony Stewart says he's determined to make right the wrongs his actions have caused. Jonathan Ferrey/Allsport

By Denise N. Maloof, CNNSI.com

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. -- He'd likely scoff at the designation of garage sage, but Dale Earnhardt Jr. took the pulse of one of NASCAR's latest brouhahas Friday, and came away with an interesting reading.

Asked to contemplate the fallout from Tony Stewart's post-Brickyard 400 tangle with a photographer, Earnhardt offered this perspective:

"I would walk over to Tony Stewart right now and joke about it, and pick on him about it," he said. "But the press and everybody else has done made such a damn big deal about it, it ain't even a laughing matter any more."

Earnhardt was speaking as a friend, of a friend -- far from flippant. He and Stewart occasionally run together off the track, and on a day when Jimmy Spencer and Kurt Busch met with NASCAR officials to address their differences, and Stewart met the media en masse for the first time since last Sunday's incident, such forthright observations were refreshing.

"It was funny," Earnhardt said of Busch's and Spencer's paint-and-barb-trading at Indianapolis. "And it was funny to hear Jimmy come back. 'He needs to watch his mouth.' Those things are great. Those things are exciting and fun. Even when I am involved in it."

Other opinions varied. Most garage folk accept that you can't take pokes at people, or engage in potentially dangerous track feuds, yet most also agreed that the whys-and-wherefores of such incidents aren't always so cut-and-dried.

"Our concern is the safety and well-being and the orderly conduct in the garage, both in the garage area and out on the race track," said John Darby, Winston Cup series director. "And although in every incident there's only really two people who know beyond a shadow of doubt what happened, we still look into all the incidents that happen on the race track and have for years, and will continue to do so."

Jeff Burton said temper explosions -- the signature of the short-track races he revered as a kid -- used to be the racing norm.

"All of those guys were rough and tough, wouldn't take any crap off of you," he said. "I mean, it was nothing -- every one of those short-track races, somebody had somebody by the collar after the race. That's just the way it was."

"But if we go off the model that sports are a microcosm of society, then that doesn't work in society," said Kyle Petty. "Outbursts like that don't work in everyday life. There has to be some control and some controlling factors and some controlling monitors that happen. And yet, this is an incredibly intense sport."

Of last Sunday's two incidents at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Stewart's was seen as the most serious. Upset at a 12th-place finish after winning the pole at his home-state track and running near the front all day, Stewart took a post-race swipe at a photographer before exiting the garage.

Consequences quickly added up. NASCAR zapped him with a $10,000 fine and probation until the end of the year. Stewart's sponsor, The Home Depot, went further, extracting $50,000 more. On Friday, Stewart, who has been disciplined for previous angry instances, said he'd feared for his job.

"That's what probably has hurt the most is knowing that I've let Home Depot down, and all the people at Joe Gibbs Racing down that give their whole lives to doing what we do," Stewart said. "Then to have somebody like myself destroy that for everybody, it's a hard responsibility and a hard pill to swallow. It's just making me more dedicated now and more determined that I want to make things right for all these people."

"When everybody's putting pressure on you to fix something, you damn sure don't want to do it," Burton said of Stewart's hyper-competitiveness and anger challenges. "You're like, 'The hell with you. It's who I am; it's what I do.' Unfortunately for Tony, his weakness is out there and exposed for everybody. And that's probably harder on him than it would be if he had another problem."

Spencer-Busch II was typical racing heartburn; turn 3 contact at Indy followed by Busch spinning into the wall, Busch gesturing wildly to Spencer as he passed under caution, and inflammatory comments from both drivers afterward. Busch-Spencer I came earlier this season at Bristol, when Busch's hard driving knocked Spencer from the late lead, and led to Busch's first Cup win.

"If we see some repetition or see some history developing, we just like to take the extra effort to get it stopped," Darby said of Friday morning's pow-wow that included Busch and owner Jack Roush, and Spencer and owner Chip Ganassi.

"It's interesting, because those things have been the fire and the coals and the engine behind the sport for so many years," Earnhardt said. "It really made it interesting to the public, especially the people who really don't know much about racing. When they see things like that, that's what they latch onto."

But sponsors don't. While public-relations gaffes aren't advisable any time, they're even less so when the entity associated with them is the one paying all the bills.

"I try to stay north of that kind of stuff," Ganassi said of the hoopla surrounding racing scrapes. "But you never end up staying completely out of it. I'm very image-conscious of the team because that's all we are here. When there are this many fans involved and this much media attention, it's sport, but it's show business, too. It's everything. That's all we have to sell here is our performance and our image."

Earnhardt said he empathizes with Stewart. He's had some sponsor-explaining to do, too.

"They allow me to be who I want to be," he said of Budweiser. "But I know what's tasteful and distasteful. And I make a lot of mistakes myself. And we talk about it and hash it out, and they're very forgiving, because I've said some things that have really bit me in the butt before. And I'm not saying what Tony did is great for a sponsor. It's probably not. If I'm a sponsor, I would be ashamed or embarrassed a little bit, you know?"

Consider the arena, said Petty, who noted racing is the only major sport where a microphone is immediately stuck in one's face when an event ends.

"That's bad because you don't have the time to get your emotions back under control," said Petty. "And I think there needs to be a grace period sometimes to be able to get your emotions back under control. And I think Tony's incident -- in defense of Tony Stewart last week -- [he] had a phenomenal car, [and] had a shot at winning one of the biggest races of the year. [He] put himself in position and then it didn't happen. How do you think he feels? He feels devastated."

Stewart, whom Earnhardt called, "really strong-minded, really opinionated," said he was heartened by Friday's expressions of support from other drivers.

"There's a bunch of them that have come up today at different times and said, 'Hey, we just want you to know we're thinking about you and we care about you,'" Stewart said. "And that right there means enough for me to know that I got a good group of guys around me."

"I think Tony is a good person," Burton said. "I just think that he hasn't learned how to control himself in certain situations. But that doesn't make him a bad person. It just means that's what he needs to work on."

 

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