Tony Stewart Lets Out Fear of a $100,000 Loss After Taking Over Wife Leah’s NHRA Seat

The two drag racing types have much in common. Both Top Alcohol and Top Fuel dragsters have a maximum wheelbase of 300 inches. Both travel on 17-inch rear slicks from Goodyear. Despite the existence of common ground, the disparity is way bigger. Primarily, the massive horsepower difference stands out – while Top Alcohol runs on 4000 hp, Top Fuel runs on 11,000 hp. And Tony Stewart had to adapt to the latter on short notice, replacing his wife Leah Pruett.

Not only that, but the motorsports veteran also tackled pecuniary challenges. Maneuvering the high speeds of the unique Top Fuel dragsters aside, he had to balance a racing and a personal life. So expenses occupied the first rung on Tony Stewart’s mind. That made his Top Fuel even more nail-biting.

Tony Stewart confesses reason for nervousness

The versatile racer has weathered many storms in his career. Tony Stewart’s crossover moves have been matched only by the likes of A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti. Yet even those legends did not dare to step across the threshold of drag racing too far. Stewart has done so, and successfully. In 2023, he finished runner-up in the championship run for the NHRA Sportsman Top Alcohol Dragsters. At the end of that year, he took over his wife Leah Pruett’s seat, as the latter prepared to start a family. However, Stewart’s wife was involved in a way more risky game – and that left Stewart biting his nails.

In a recent interview with MAVTV, Tony Stewart candidly expressed his fear about venturing into Top Fuel. His primary reason for feeling nervous was all due to the bigger buck involved. “I was really worried going into the season. I’d run a year in Top Alcohol…but now you’re going into an 11,000+ hp car. And it’s way more expensive – if you spin the tires in the Top Alcohol class, it doesn’t really hurt the motor or anything. But you do that in a Top Fuel car, it’s a $100,000. You blow up a blower, injectors – everything. It gets real expensive real quick.” 

Simply put, these NHRA Top Fuel cars don’t come in cheap. Every single aspect of this car takes meticulous planning and hours of work to get right. To begin with, a single engine costs about $58,000, and must be taken apart, and then rebuilt after every single run the car makes. The clutch fuel assembly alone costs $5,000. Not to mention, all of this has to take place in a massive time crunch, meaning highly skilled engineers who aren’t cheap to bring into the team.

As a team owner, if Tony Stewart crashes anytime, it’s not just a matter of safety, but also of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars out of his own pocket. He’s already in a racing league that needs a lot of maintenance costs. Add on to that his concerns about being a former race car turned team owner with a limit on how much he can spend on his NHRA team, and his concerns about saving money on crashes starts to make even more sense.

Stewart continued that further concerns involved the employees of Tony Stewart Racing. He said he was “just trying to make sure that wasn’t going to cost the team or the organization money and wasn’t going to cost the guys a lot of extra work and time to repair and get replacements for those parts I tore up.” However, the results were positive – Stewart powered to a semifinal finish and also managed to join Leah Pruett and witness the birth of his son Dominic. He proudly said that he avoided any untoward incidents, “So knock on wood, thank goodness, we did not have any of those moments early in the season. But it was a big learning year more than anything.”

Besides avoiding expenses, Tony Stewart also adapted to Top Fuel’s maddening speed.

Stewart recollects dizzying experience

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As aforementioned, there is a sky-high difference between Top Alcohol and Top Fuel dragsters. Besides the vast disparity in horsepower, the racing in Top Fuel is also unique. Here, races last four seconds instead of 400 miles and left turns are extremely daunting. The fastest speed on record is 338.17 mph (Top Fuel) at 1,000 feet. On the other hand, a Top Alcohol Dragster can travel as fast as 285 mph in the quarter-mile.

The quickest Top Fuel pass on record is 3.623 seconds. So maneuvering the iconic long, skinny, winged machine that routinely travels at speeds of more than 330 mph is no mean feat. And Tony Stewart accomplished that – but not without enough dread. He elaborated on his dual experiences in the dragster world.

“A Top Alcohol car gets the majority of the work done in 600 ft. It’s got the heavy pulling done…it’s still accelerating hard but just not as hard. The Top Fuel car, the run is 320 ft less. And at half track for that car, it is like it’s grabbing another gear. So where the Alcohol car is rolling over and still accelerating, now the Top Fuel car – you think you’re going fast…but when the clutch gets one to one, now you’re really going fast. So the last half of the run in the Top Fuel car is when you really notice that speed.”

Evidently, Tony Stewart had a thrilling time in his Top Fuel seat. With more plans in place for 2025, let us wait and see what speedy ventures the veteran has in store.