Tony Stewart Reminisces the Advice of Bobby Labonte, as He Savored His Championship Winning Moment

Tony Stewart is one of the greatest motorsports athletes to have ever stepped pedal to metal in NASCAR. The co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing has clearly had a career worth envying. However, becoming the Cup Series champion for the first time can be a daunting task for any driver given the responsibilities that follow. In the case of Stewart, he was lucky enough to be helped by another NASCAR great, Bobby Labonte.

The 52-year-old won the first of his three Cup Series championships in 2002. At the time, the ‘Smoke’ was a driver at Joe Gibbs Racing and he had Bobby Labonte as his teammate. Two years before Stewart won his first Cup title, Labonte won the championship. When the time came for his teammate to step into the spotlight, the 2000 Cup Series champion had some valuable advice that stuck with the SHR boss.

Tony Stewart reveals Bobby Labonte warned him ahead of hectic championship week

A recent video released by Stewart-Haas Racing revealed valuable advice while speaking to current Cup Series driver Chase Briscoe. Tony Stewart revealed that his teammate back then had revealed the difficulties of becoming the Cup Series champion, especially the week right after winning the title.

“I think my first teammate in Cup, Bobby Labonte, was the one that said it best. He had won the championship two years before I did. When I won the championship, he told me, ‘The week, championship week is going to be hectic. You’re going to hate it. It’s busy, you don’t get any downtime. They keep you busy the entire time and you’re going to be exhausted by the time you get to the banquet’,” the three-time Cup Series driver revealed. 

However, the advice was to enjoy every moment of everything that followed. Why? For the simple reason that the future was unpredictable. There was no telling when he would repeat the feat. Bobby Labonte himself was only successful in winning NASCAR’s prize only once. Stewart believes that the advice was why he had a blast the week after winning the title in 2002.

“But he goes, ‘Cherish every second of it and every moment of it even though it seems annoying and it seems like it’s too busy,’ he goes because you never know when that’s going to happen again. And he goes when it’s over, it’s over and you can’t go back and go, ‘Man I wish I would have just relaxed and enjoyed this a little bit.’ So I’ve always remembered that and I had a blast that championship week,” the NASCAR legend added.

Being a race car driver comes with a lot of challenges. One of which, as per Tony Stewart, was not taking the time to fully appreciate a race victory. The three-time Cup Series champion acknowledged that while it was important to think about the following weekend’s race, a victory should be properly taken in and acknowledged. That is exactly what he did the first time he won the Brickyard 400.

Read More – Tony Stewart Set to Trigger Noah Gragson’s Cup Revival, Similar to Rick Hendrick’s Kyle Larson Masterstroke

Smoke reveals humble celebration at Indianapolis Motor Speedway

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Indianapolis is one of the most iconic tracks in the world. Every driver in the world dreams of winning at the historic circuit. When Tony Stewart did it for the first time in 2005 in the Cup Series, he revealed that he stayed late at the track just to enjoy that feeling of achievement when everybody had left.

“I remember the night we won our first Brickyard 400. We were still at the race track at 9:00 at night and the last thing we did, it was myself, Eddie Jarvis, Mike Arning, we were walking out of the media center and they still had the pylon lit on the front stretch. It had all 160 laps up there and had our number at the top of it and we just literally, the three of us stood there. It was the first time since we had got up that morning that nothing was going on. There weren’t people around, there weren’t any distractions, and just stand there and enjoy that moment,” he said.

It truly is a heartwarming story coming straight from one of the greatest of all time. In today’s highly competitive motorsports world, it is important for drivers to take just that little bit of time out. So that they appreciate what they have worked so hard to achieve whenever they win a race.

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