Thursday, July 23, 2009

Best of the Marbles: Tony Stewart's hands-on management

[Continuing with our look back at some of the more interesting posts of the last few months here at The Marbles. Today, we look back at how Tony Stewart takes care of his own. Please note, this happened months ago and is NOT a current event. Tony is also much more mature than this now, as we've seen in recent days.]

If this is what Tony Stewart's Sprint Cup ownership is going to be like, NASCAR's going to have its hands full real fast. At last Thursday night's [again, this was from 2008] USAC race at O'Reilly Raceway Park in Indiana, Smoke went googly-eyed crazy on an officiating crew, assaulting -- in the legal, if not the racing, sense -- at least two of them. Seems that the crew wouldn't let Stewart's driver Tracey Hines back onto the track after a wreck, and things got really ugly from there. A civvies-clad Smoke came charging into the fray faster than you could ever imagine him moving -- he's the blur in the Home Depot orange oval below:


He then proceeded to yank the headphones off of one official:


He stormed off, and en route, shoved another official right in the chest:


And then seethed for awhile. (You can check out the full video right here at WTHR-Indianapolis's website.)

Hmmm. Wonder why nobody made a big deal of this one at Sunday's Brickyard telecast? Not quite the kinder, gentler politically correct image that Smoke has been trying to project now that he's an owner, huh?

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