Tony Stewart made his Cup debut for Joe Gibbs Racing in 1999. That rookie season, however, could have come two years earlier with a different team. But something changed for Stewart, and he chose the JGR route instead. Almost 30 years on, the three-time Cup Series winner looks back at that period as somewhat of a missed opportunity.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
“We did work together; we just didn’t get to work together enough, and honestly that’s probably one of my bigger regrets is that we didn’t actually get to finish what we started with Ranier,” said Stewart on the Door Bumper Clear podcast.
Stewart was addressing Tommy Baldwin, who was supposed to be his crew chief in his previously agreed-upon Cup Series rookie season at Ranier-Walsh Racing. Back in 1996, Stewart ran 9 races for RWR in the Busch Series while also making his Indy Racing League debut.
“I started driving for Harry Ranier, and I got hurt really bad in Las Vegas at the first IndyCar race at the Vegas track,” Stewart said. “They (RWR) wanted to run the ARCA race at Atlanta, and I got in the first time, and I told Tommy, I said. I don’t know that I can just get in and out all day. So literally, I got in at nine in the morning, stayed in the car till noon, and then got out for an hour for lunch, got back in, and I was like, man. I don’t know if I can do this.”
“We were half a second faster than the entire ARCA field that was testing, and we ran the next day,” he added. “Same thing got in twice; the whole day didn’t get out of it. And we were, I think, third quick on the sheet with the Cup cars.”
While they never got a chance to team up in the Cup Series, in 1996, Baldwin and Stewart worked closely in the Busch Series, and during testing and practice, Baldwin began to see signs of what Stewart would be capable of in stock cars.
“I knew how good Tony Stewart was going to be when we left because we were hauling a** and he comes to me, ‘Hey, man, do me a favor. Make it tight, so I know what tight is,” Baldwin said. “Okay, comes in, ‘Make it loose, make it free, so I know what free feels like,’ so we free it up to it. First 3 or 4 laps, same thing about the 4th, 5th lap. He’s back at the same time; I’m like, this son of a b**** is gonna be good. He can adjust to what the car is doing, slow down his hands, his feet, do whatever needs to be done, and he’s gonna make it work, and then he left me. You left me.”
Clearly Baldwin is still upset, but knowing that Stewart sees that as a missed opportunity must be of some solace. Stewart’s highest finish for RWR was 16th at Bristol, and given that he was still driving in open-wheel and competing for a title there, he decided that 1997 would be too early for a Cup debut. Instead, he looked for another limited race schedule in 1997 before running a full-season, heavy schedule in 1998.
Stewart backed out of his deal with RWR to race in the Cup Series in 1997 because he felt he wasn’t ready. By then, Stewart had eyes from all over the stock car world watching him. Joe Gibbs was interested in Stewart, and he needed to retain Shell as a sponsor.
Shell and Gibbs were discussing future prospects when Stewart’s name came up, and Shell asked Gibbs to pursue the soon-to-be 1997 IndyCar champ. Gibbs revealed his unconventional methods of tracking down Stewart, including asking his girlfriend where Stewart would be next.
When Gibbs finally tracked Stewart down, the IndyCar champ told the JGR owner that he wasn’t ready for Cup. Gibbs got Shell on board to give Stewart 5 races in the Busch Series in 1997 and then another 22 races in the 1998 season. But Gibbs needed a car, so he put him in the Labonte Motorsports No. 44 Pontiac.
Gibbs would eventually buy the operation from Labonte to monitor Stewart’s progression closely. Although he didn’t win a single race in those 27 races across two years, he got six top-five and seven top-10 finishes. But that was enough for him to gain the confidence he needed in stock cars before entering the big leagues.
And damage aside, Coach Gibbs saw what Stewart would do in a Cup car. Smoke was at JGR from 1999 to 2008 in the Cup Series, and picked up two Cup titles in 2002 and 2005. Yet we wonder how differently things would have shaped up for the motorsports legend had he begun his Cup career in 1997 itself.