The Questions With Tony Stewart

What was your welcome-to- NASCAR moment?
I was leading my first 125 qualifying race for the Daytona 500 in my rookie year [1999] when I saw Dale Earnhardt come up behind me. He moved right, then left, then poof, he was gone. He blew by me and took the entire field with him. I was like, O.K., here we go. I guess I'm in NASCAR.

What was your most embarrassing moment?
The day I got into it with Kenny Irwin. I reached into his car and smacked at him. It was an idiotic thing to do.

What's one misconception people have about NASCAR?
They think we show up at the track on Thursday, leave Sunday and get the rest of the week off. Wrong. We sometimes work seven days a week, and it's 12 months a year. Pretty grueling.

If I ran NASCAR for a day, I'd ...
shorten the schedule. Instead of 36 races, I'd scale it back to 24.

If I weren't in NASCAR, I'd ...
be trying to find a real job, which would suck. I barely graduated high school, so I might not even be able to find a job. Maybe I'd be a cab driver.

LAST WEEK
After taking third at the Budweiser Shootout, Stewart criticized rules that lead drivers to bump other cars, saying, "We're going to kill somebody."

THIS WEEK
Stewart will drive in Sunday's Daytona 500, at which he finished second in 2004 and seventh last year.