After Starting Another Venture Outside NASCAR, Tony Stewart Reveals Lessons He Plucked From SHR to His NHRA Team

Tony Stewart has been the most active in the racing scene even after retiring as a driver. The three-time champ has taken part ownership of Stewart Haas Racing. On top of that, he also has his own NHRA team. And he just revealed his biggest lesson as an owner.

Looks like Stewart was an incredible driver, but is now an even better owner.

A driver is only one part of the equation of a racing team. In fact, the crew is just as important, because you could have the best driver on earth, but in a bad car, they can never perform. And it is the owner’s duty to manage all the people in a team to ensure optimum performance coming from all ends. Of course, Stewart’s biggest lesson involved exactly that, as he revealed in an episode of the Skinny Racing podcast.

“I think just how to manage people more than anything,” said Stewart. “But there’s challenges to big groups. And, there’s challenges to big to small groups as well. I mean, you looked at the cup side, where we have 360 employees at SHR, and then you come down to TSR with the Sprint Cart team with Donny Schatz’s crew. And there’s three guys on there.”

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Tony Stewart explained how it’s harder to take care of a smaller team

A smaller team has fewer people which should be easier to take care of, right? Turns out it isn’t easier to take care of a big group is ever harder as he explained, “Somebody’s having a bad day at SHR. It’s one-third of a percent one-third of 1% of the equation. Where you have somebody on Donny Schatz’s screw that’s having a bad day. It’s 33% of the equation.”

Stewart added, “So sometimes it’s harder to manage small groups than big groups. But. You learn how to do both and then having 24-25 people on the TSR Nitro side. It makes that a little easier to manage just because I’m used to doing small-scale to large-scale.”

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Well, that sure is a surprise. But what do you think about Stewart’s ownership skills? Let us know in the comments.