“That Part Can Get Scary”- Tony Stewart Exposes the Dark Side of Social Media With Harsh Reality Check to 40-YO Critics

No individual is impervious to criticism. Be it in one’s daily life or in the world of racing, While positive feedback can improve a driver’s game, prompting him or her to raise the bar to push beyond the limits and prove their worth, unfair judgments are something the current wave of drivers has to cope with.

In this day and age, everyone is a critic, with social media giving them a massive platform to voice their opinions. Besides their jam-packed schedule, racers now have to keep track of their activity since these keyboard warriors can cause a ruckus out of anything. Reflecting on this very aspect, 3-time Cup Series champion and one of the most outspoken drivers of his generation, Tony “Smoke” Stewart, opened up, exposing the bad of such social media critics.

Tony Stewart uncovers the dark side of social media as the SHR co-owner sits down with his driver

Unlike the old days when people actually heard the news, researched a bit from their end, and made judgments, the current generation is on a whole different level. Everyone is sort of a critic these days, as they voice their thoughts openly through social media. While sharing one’s opinion is the right thing to do, nitpicking and spreading blatant hatred is something one shouldn’t be focused on.

In the world of NASCAR, this has serious consequences. Drivers are now one step away from controversy, with these so-called critics always on the lookout for spicy content. Controversy is their element; editing and sharing content that can blow up is now the thing on social media.

Reflecting on this dark side of social media, Tony Stewart in his one-on-one with Chase Briscoe said, “Everybody is a critic on social media because all they have to do is sit in their room at their parent’s house while they’re 40 years old.“ The veteran then launched a full-on assault on such haters, mentioning the obvious truth about them while he exposed the scary side of this unnecessary criticism. 

“They can sit there and type whatever they want, that part can get scary because you know sometimes some of the comments just aren’t even realistic and not even fair,” said the SHR co-owner before he gave his driver a valuable piece of advice, “But you can’t live and die by those, you got to sit there and be true to yourself know who you are, know what message you want to say and stay behind your words.”

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Stewart opens up about his ownership experience in the NHRA

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While many athletes are looking forward to resting their shoes once they hit retirement age, Stewart looks like he has just begun. After a successful and illustrious career in NASCAR and IndyCar, The 52-year-old has 49 wins over the years in NASCAR’s Cup Series and 4 titles, 3 as a driver and 1 as the proud co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing.

After his retirement in 2016, he shifted his focus to other domains like drag racing, midget racing, etc. The NASCAR great now has an NHRA drag team (Tony Stewart Racing), where he won his first-ever national drag event earlier this year in Vegas. While the journey has been rough with the veteran tweaking and tuning to find the right spot after 2 years since entering the NHRA scene with his team, he got his first win in 2023.

Speaking to Forbes, Stewart opened up about the differences and similarities of owning a NASCAR, NHRA team. He said, “I think total, we have around 25, 26 people at TSR that are just on the Nitro teams. You know, versus at one time, I think we were up to 385 or something at SHR. So the amount of people it takes is drastically different.”

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Tony further added, “It costs less money to operate a Nitro team at a level that needs to be done at; when I say that I mean not cutting costs, not having to time parts out too long. You can do it for a reasonable budget. I feel like the hard part is just generating the sponsorship to do it. But on the NHRA side versus the Cup side, I mean, it’s less than half the cost of running a full-time Cup team, one car from car to car that is.”