{"id":5360,"date":"2011-05-26T11:10:53","date_gmt":"2011-05-26T15:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/?p=9076"},"modified":"2011-05-26T07:11:49","modified_gmt":"2011-05-26T11:11:49","slug":"tony-stewart-coke-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/tony-stewart-coke-it\/","title":{"rendered":"TONY STEWART Coke Is It!"},"content":{"rendered":"

TONY STEWART
\nCoke Is It!<\/strong><\/p>\n

KANNAPOLIS, N.C., (May 25, 2011) \u2013 For Indiana native Tony Stewart, one event on Memorial Day weekend used to trump all others \u2013 the Indianapolis 500. But after more than 30 years of racing competitively \u2013 13 of which have been spent in the elite NASCAR Sprint Cup Series \u2013 the Greatest Spectacle in Racing has, believe it or not, taken a backseat to the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n

Memorial Day weekend provides a motorsports mosaic, from stock cars in Charlotte to sports cars in Lime Rock, Conn., to the cornerstone of the weekend \u2013 the Indianapolis 500. Stewart pays attention to all of it, and for the better part of his career, Indy reigned supreme. And why not?<\/p>\n

The recently turned 40-year-old grew up 45 minutes from the corner of 16th Street and Georgetown Road in Columbus. His first in-person look at the Indy 500 came when he was five, but by his eighth birthday, Stewart was no longer content to be a spectator. <\/p>\n


\nHis first go-kart race came in 1978 in Westport, Ind. His first go-kart win came in 1979 in Westport. And the first of his three go-kart championships came in 1980 at the Columbus Fairgrounds. They were all a prelude of things to come, as Stewart would go on to win four USAC championships, an IZOD IndyCar Series title, two Sprint Cup Series championships and the final International Race of Champions (IROC) crown.<\/p>\n

Along that path, particularly when Stewart became a champion in USAC in 1994, won the USAC \u201cTriple Crown\u201d in 1995 and then advanced to Indy cars in 1996, the Hoosier seemed destined to become a mainstay at Indy. And he would, but in stock cars.<\/p>\n

Like many other promising open-wheelers, Stewart made his racing home in NASCAR. He ran a five-race NASCAR Nationwide Series schedule in 1997 while simultaneously capturing the IZOD IndyCar Series championship. Twenty-two Nationwide Series races followed in 1998 in preparation for his rookie year in Sprint Cup in 1999.<\/p>\n

With the exception of two \u201cDouble Duty\u201d stints in 1999 and 2001 where Stewart competed in the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 on the same weekend, Stewart hasn\u2019t looked back.<\/p>\n

Long gone are the G-Forces and Dallaras. It\u2019s a Chevy Impala now and for Stewart\u2019s immediate future. That\u2019s because the owner of five Indianapolis 500 starts \u2013 with a best finish of fifth in 1997 \u2013 is now a NASCAR lifer. He\u2019s the co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing, the Sprint Cup team he co-owns with Gene Haas, founder of Haas Automation \u2013 the largest machine tool manufacturer in the western world. And he\u2019s running for a third Sprint Cup championship, among the top-10 in points after just 11 of 36 rounds of racing.<\/p>\n

Another foray to Indy while performing his regular job in NASCAR as the driver of the No. 14 Office Depot\/Mobil 1 Chevy would take Stewart\u2019s eyes off the prize, and with more than 150 employees toiling at his shop in Kannapolis, it\u2019s a compromise he\u2019s unwilling to make.<\/p>\n

As such, Stewart\u2019s mindset is like the old Coca-Cola slogan from 1982: \u201cCoke Is It.\u201d He\u2019ll watch the Indianapolis 500 as an interested television viewer, but will participate in the Coca-Cola 600 as a tenacious competitor. And at the end of the 600-miler, which will wrap close to midnight, Stewart is intent on having \u201cA Coke and a Smile\u201d from Charlotte\u2019s victory lane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TONY STEWART Coke Is It! KANNAPOLIS, N.C., (May 25, 2011) \u2013 For Indiana native Tony Stewart, one event on Memorial Day weekend used to trump all others \u2013 the Indianapolis 500. But after more than 30 years of racing competitively \u2013 13 of which have been spent in the elite NASCAR Sprint Cup Series \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[15775],"class_list":["post-5360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}