Remember when Tony Stewart was a Big Deal?
Two-time Cup champion. 32 wins in the series.
But, at 37, Tony's suddenly finding himself in an unusual position: left behind.
All the attention these days is focused on teammate Kyle Busch, whose wild antics have brought him wins in all three of NASCAR's top series. He's the hottest thing on the track right now, and he's 14 years younger.
And Gibbs teammate Denny Hamlin is drawing his share of attention, too.
Which leaves Stewart exactly where?
He's not performed like a champion this season in Sprint Cup, although that's not always been his fault. He was on the way to a win at Charlotte in the Coca-Cola 600 when a flat tire took him out of contention with just three laps to go, for example.
On the other hand, he's won four times in the Nationwide series this season, so all is not bleak.
But Stewart is dropping in points in the Cup series--he fell three spots this week alone, to 11th. The last time Stewart failed to make the Chase for the Cup playoffs (in 2006, when there were only ten drivers in the Chase) NASCAR added two more positions the following season, so it's safe to say it's expected that he'll make the Chase.
It's been a tough year for Stewart, who ran into Elliot Sadler in last Sunday's race at Dover, in a wreck that took out a good portion of the top points contenders, on lap 17. In typical sarcastic style, he said, "I take 100 percent responsibility--it's my fault for being anywhere close to Elliot. If I'm within a half a lap of him, I expect that to happen."
That was old-school Smoke, but his bad-boy role has been usurped by Kyle Busch this year.
Stewart has always talked off-handedly about the fact that he loves racing, not just Cup racing, and has expressed his displeasure about the corporate environment that comes with top-level racing series.
It's why he continues to put so much effort into projects like this week's Prelude to the Dream race, an event he holds annually at Eldora Speedway in Ohio.
"You get to do something differentt that's no stress and it's all about having fun," he said.
His roots in USAC and Midgets run deep, and he still runs the dirt-track Chili Bowl race every year in Tulsa. Stewart owns World of Outlaws and USAC teams.
A few weeks ago, when he began to talk about co-owning a Cup team in the near future--a move that would take him away from the only team he's known in Cup racing, Joe Gibbs Racing--the wisdom of such a move was widely questioned. Gibbs gives him good equipment and is a top-level team; one need only look at the tribulations of Michael Waltrip, who started a team of his own in 2007 and nearly went broke in one season before being rescued by an investor, to see what can go wrong. Waltrip still isn't competitive on the track.
It's already having a negative effect, according to Greg Zipadelli, Stewart's crew chief, who said when the rumors of Stewart leaving to run his own team "come up every day, it's a distraction."
It seems like a bad idea for a guy who likes racing, not politics or business, to buy into a Sprint Cup team as an owner, but either way, Tony Stewart will need to make a decision soon, or that distraction will likely mean another year without championship hopes.