NASCAR's Driving Force

By Bill Saporito

In NASCAR country, folks say Tony Stewart's return to his idyllic hometown has made him a better competitor. The compact, 5-ft. 9-in. driver abandoned the Charlotte, N.C., area--the roaring capital of stock-car racing--and returned to cozy Columbus, Ind. Sure enough, with just three races to go, he was the leader in this year's Chase for the Nextel Cup, stock-car racing's grand prize. What has changed? Well, he spends a lot more time hanging with his friends and being a good neighbor. In short, the locals say, he has mellowed out.

Don't buy it. Here's what Mr. Mellow had to say after a recent race about fellow NASCAR driver Greg Biffle: "That guy is an idiot ... right now if he came over here I'm afraid I'd have to strangle him." Stewart had just finished a close second to Jeff Gordon, ahead of Jimmie Johnson, on the half-mile, bumper-to-bumper, fun-house oval at Martinsville, Va. Biffle, about to get lapped on a restart, had played chicken with him, nearly causing a crash. The fact is, Stewart's mouth doesn't have a brake. He is incapable of being anything but candid. The last time something like that happened, he crossed the finish line, then tried to spear a rival with his car as if the guy were a postrace hors d'oeuvre. "Tony wears it on his sleeve," says NBC's NASCAR expert and fellow driver Wally Dallenbach, who applauds Stewart's passion. "We have enough robots in this business."

The Chase for the Nextel Cup, in its second season, has given stock-car racing a play-off format that helps NASCAR compete for fans' attention in the fall, when football is in full swing and baseball play-offs are under way. The Top 10 racers fight it out over the last 10 races--you score points based on how you finish and for lead laps--for the overall driving title. "All the emotion of a championship that other sports had is now part of our sport," says NASCAR president Mike Helton.

Stewart, 34, is one of the reasons why. He's so skilled, he could pass another car on a bowling alley. And he obviously hasn't relaxed one r.p.m. on the track. "Trust me," he tells TIME, "when it's time to be aggressive, I can still be aggressive. I haven't forgotten how to do that." He won five of the tour's 26 regular races, and going into last weekend's race in Fort Worth, Texas, he had a 43-point lead in the Chase over a posse including Johnson, Biffle, Kyle Busch and veterans Rusty Wallace, 49, and Mark Martin, 46, who are on their last laps before retiring this year. That seems like enough of a cushion. Then again, this is NASCAR: 43 racers start each event, but there are more parts than cars at the finish. One wreck, and the standings could shift dramatically.

Stewart became a star by winning the more glamorous Indy Racing League title in 1997. But he switched to NASCAR in part because there are more races. And more challenging races. If you're driving an Indy car at 220 m.p.h., he says, the aerodynamics are so good, you can pretty much floor it all the time. "You're thinking about what you're going to have for dinner while you're sitting there," he says. Stock cars are heavier, 700-h.p. Neanderthals, custom-built throwback machines. "At the end of a straightaway, you've got to use the brakes and force 3,400 lbs. to change direction, which it doesn't want to do." And you've got other drivers who think nothing of sitting on your rear bumper, stealing your downdraft, making your car "loose" and sending you flying up the track.

It was the daily pressure to create a winning race car that caused Stewart to pull himself over for a psychological pit stop. "I decided, 'I'm just going to up and go home,'" he said. It wasn't that Stewart disliked Charlotte (memo to Chamber of Commerce: he's still got a place there). It's that he just couldn't get away from the shop, which was only about 15 minutes from his house. So now Stewart spends time between races with his buddies, fishing or riding four-wheelers through the woods. "To be able to maintain a competitive edge, you have to be able to turn it off, reset yourself and then turn it back on again," says Stewart. "It's hard to maintain that intensity all year doing it seven days a week." In the meantime, his crew chief Greg Zipadelli made a series of adjustments to the No. 20 car that has made it a front runner in almost every race. Relaxed mind, fast car. Good combination.

One thing Stewart can't control is his appetite for a race. Any race. He has driven go-karts, three-quarter midgets, full midgets, Grand Am, winged and unwinged sprint cars, trucks, Indy cars. He still drives in races that offer a $1,000 first prize. "I'm a race-car driver," says Stewart. "That's what I do." Just wait until he joins the volunteer fire department back home in Indiana.