It is unusual, but it’s just something he likes to do. I guess he enjoys that style of racing.
A lot of the Sprint Cup drivers will race in the truck or Nationwide races that are usually held in conjunction with the Sprint Cup race.
Hothead #1 confronts hothead #2. Hothead #2 guns his engine to show up #1, and when he does, the car slips to the right.
I think Stewart’s action is responsible for the death. I’ve seen plenty of races where a driver gets out on the track to confront the other driver, sometimes throwing his helmet at the other car. Absolutely it’s dangerous and foolish, but this is not the first time it’s happened. In a Nascar race, drivers like Stewart drive at 200 mph with only inches between him and the other car. They have lightning reflexes and he could have easily avoided this situation.
Heck, here’s a clip of Stewart himself on the track throwing his helmet Matt Kenseth as he drives through pit row after they got into a wreck.
Stewart has a long history of being a confrontational hot head. It’s not too surprising to see him involved in this.
Is there going to a serious investigation by auto racing experts? Or just the investigation by the Sheriff’s Department.
I don’t get why everybody is assuming Stewart had any reason to be “hotheaded” about anything. 
I doubt he ever even met this kid before, they barely touched and the kid got spun. Stewart did maybe two laps under yellow, then the kid runs down the track pointing at him. Tragedy ensues.
I can’t see this being Stewart’s fault in any way.
While Sprint cars are smaller in size, they often have much more power than NASCAR does. NASCAR considered reducing the maximum HP in their cars this year but ultimately decided not to, so they have about 850 HP.
From the wiki article on Sprint car racing: ‘‘Power outputs of 900 horsepower (670 kW) up to 1,100 horsepower (820 kW) is commonplace for these machines, which typically are powered by a naturally aspirated V8 with a 410 cubic inch engine displacement.’’
Just in case you thought that the smaller size and racing on dirt put them more in the toy/fun category. They are pretty serious machines.
Because they love to race, as I understand it. Stewart is worth many millions - so whatever little purse there is would mean nothing to him. Also, going back to his roots kind of a thing, as drivers often come up through Sprint on the way to NASCAR.
BTW, last year on August 5th Stewart was racing a Sprint car between NASCAR races (oddly enough right before Watkins Glen - the race from today) and he was in a crash that severly broke his leg in two places. He ended up missing the rest of his NASCAR season.
Stewart probably didn’t know the kid at all, but that has nothing to do with him being a hothead. It wasn’t like he was personally out get get Ward at all costs. Rather, he has anger issues. He’s been in racing a long time and has been involved in many scuffles. Here’s another example of his outbursts where he went over and started a fight with another driver. Stewart is not good at controlling his anger.
It could be that this incident was a total accident, but his history puts that into doubt.
Big difference between a scuffle and deliberately hitting someone with a car. One is hot-headedness the other is essentially deliberate murder. Only a very small portion of hot heads have murder in them. I’d like to hear from some people that actually know what they’re talking about as to whether Stewart deliberately hit him.
I’ve heard some people say Stewart easily could have seen the kid, and they were under caution so he was only going 40mph, but this article is written by a journalist that has actually been in Sprint cars and he says left to right visibility is essentially non-existent. Which means whatever Stewart’s reflexes, can’t react to what you can’t see.
From the article Martin Hyde posted, I see that the Sprint cars they were driving had the smaller 360 cubic inch engines, that according to the wiki article put out about 700 HP.
So these particular cars have slightly less HP than NASCAR but still a very high power to weight ratio.
There’s a definite blind spot on the right as you can see here:
But I'm not sure that would explain not seeing some guy in the middle of the track gesticulating at you like crazy. You can see the people walking to the right of the car clearly up until they hit that blind spot, then they re-appear as they move further from the car.I would buy it if this was happening while not under a flag and near a turn where view of the right side is definitely obscured.
Which, contrary to your assumption above, is exactly what would happen in a loose car if he tried to avoid Ward by steering to the left. There’s only one hothead* in this incident* and it’s the one who is 100% responsible for the accident. Everything else is merely an assumption on your part and not based on the facts of the incident.
Tony issued a statement. He sounds pretty broken up. I hope he continues sprint car racing. I always thought he did it purely for the love of driving. NASCAR driving is his profession and sprint racing his passion.
He’s on a dirt track. Sliding the the right is exactly what happens when you hit the gas while turning left. It doesn’t matter if he’s loose or not. If you spin the tires on a dirt track while turning left, the back of the car will slide to the right.
My guess is Stewart meant to spray Ward with dirt as he went by, only he hit the gas a little too hard and the back end slid up.
Sliding to the right is also what happens if you steer left, as stated. Assuming Stewart hit the gas is just guessing and guessing based on some idea of his character from a bunch of people who don’t know him and incidents seen in PART not in whole by media with a vested interest in stirring up shit. Watch that video again; the kid was wildly foolish and suffered for it. Another car barely missed him; disaster was going to happen the minute he ran out into the middle of the track.
The journalist who has actually driven Sprint cars also mentions that with those type of cars you “steer with the throttle more than with the steering wheel”, so that makes me think there may be legitimate reasons Tony would be accelerating through the turn, totally unrelated to wanting to “spray Ward with dirt” or “intentionally spin out and hit him.”
Again, not a race fan, don’t know much about cars even. But the more believable information I’m seeing makes filmore sound like he’s basically intentionally interpreting everything as poorly for Tony as possible when people who I at least know have some credibility on this indicate it probably was a complete accident.
I don’t mean that to say Tony wasn’t in a murderous craze, because hell, maybe he was. I’m just not seeing it, not that anyone has been able to explain to me (a complete neophyte in the racing world) that makes sense.
Nope - people say he hit the gas because you can very clearly, unmistakably hear that someone revved their engine right before/as Stewart’s car enters the frame. You can hear all the engines go down in volume until right before Ward gets hit.
The problem is that there is probably no way to prove from the video that the revved engine was his, but maybe witnesses could offer an opinion.
Agreed. But while I originally thought Stewart had little to no blame, the more I’ve looked at the video, in slow motion, it looks to me like his car is headed towards the outside of the track before he makes contact with Ward.
Not the back end sliding out to the right. It looks like he is actually heading in that direction to me.
Maybe based on how far down the track Ward was, Stewart could have thought he was going for the infield and decided to go right to the outside around him.
Only Stewart really knows what he was thinking and the sole video available so far seems inconclusive. So people can believe what they want to some extent.
But someone did rev their engine immediately before Ward was hit.
I think they mean that at 120 mph when drifting around the corners they steer with the throttle by controlling the rear wheel spin.
When they are going slow, such as under caution, they most certainly are using the steering wheel to determine where they are headed.
Goosing the throttle after he passed Ward to spray him with dirt makes sense. But you can hear the engine rev before he gets to Ward and it settles down as he is hitting him.
If that’s what he was going for, he mis-timed it badly.
I hate Tony Stewart. He might do some nice things for charity and his friends seem really loyal to him, but I hate him.
However, I can’t imagine he did this on purpose or even recklessly. Unless he wasn’t really fit to race at all due to his injury, it seems like just a bad incident.
I can understand the argument of “did he act too aggressively given the circumstances and his past behavior?” but some of the “He should be arrested for murder” arguments I’ve read are just ridiculous.
From the descriptions, I thought the other guy was on the edge of the track.
No, he’s right in the middle of the fucking racing line. If he stands in that particular spot for any length of time, someone is going to hit him, sorry, caution or not.
Even at caution speeds, it is easy to vastly underestimate just how fast these vehicles can go. There was an infamous incident in the 70’s in F1 where a worker tried to rush across the track to tend to a nearby wreck while the green flag was still flying, and got hit by a car, utterly eviscerating him-and killing the driver when his head hit the fire extinguisher the worker was carrying. [Decided to not link to the (gruesome) video-search for “Tom Pryce death” if curious…]
You. simply. don’t. do. something. that. idiotic. Full stop.
In my case, I’m biased from watching him race and seeing how he takes things personally. I’m not looking at this event solely as it stands. I’m considering the personality of Stewart through the years.
It’s like if you knew someone who was a bit of a road-rager. If he gets cut off in traffic, he speeds up and cuts in front of the guy to retaliate. Then one day you hear he cut in front of a car too short and pushed it off the road. If that was the first time you heard of that behavior, you’d think it was innocent. But because you’ve seen him get mad and cut people off lots of times, you’d probably think this a retaliation where he made a mistake.
In no way do I think Stewart meant to hit him at all. However, I believe Stewart purposely intended give Ward a little attitude, perhaps by revving the engine, spraying dirt, or whatever.