Word: stewart
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...NASCAR country, folks say Tony Stewart's return to his idyllic hometown has made him a better competitor. The compact, 5-ft. 9-in. driver abandoned the Charlotte, N.C., area--the roaring capital of stock-car racing--and returned to cozy Columbus, Ind. Sure enough, with just three races to go, he was the leader in this year's Chase for the Nextel Cup, stock-car racing's grand prize. What has changed? Well, he spends a lot more time hanging with his friends and being a good neighbor. In short, the locals say, he has mellowed...
...Here's what Mr. Mellow had to say after a recent race about fellow NASCAR driver Greg Biffle: "That guy is an idiot ... right now if he came over here I'm afraid I'd have to strangle him." Stewart had just finished a close second to Jeff Gordon, ahead of Jimmie Johnson, on the half-mile, bumper-to-bumper, fun-house oval at Martinsville, Va. Biffle, about to get lapped on a restart, had played chicken with him, nearly causing a crash. The fact is, Stewart's mouth doesn't have a brake. He is incapable of being anything...
...Stewart, 34, is one of the reasons why. He's so skilled, he could pass another car on a bowling alley. And he obviously hasn't relaxed one r.p.m. on the track. "Trust me," he tells TIME, "when it's time to be aggressive, I can still be aggressive. I haven't forgotten how to do that." He won five of the tour's 26 regular races, and going into last weekend's race in Fort Worth, Texas, he had a 43-point lead in the Chase over a posse including Johnson, Biffle, Kyle Busch and veterans Rusty Wallace...
...Stewart became a star by winning the more glamorous Indy Racing League title in 1997. But he switched to NASCAR in part because there are more races. And more challenging races. If you're driving an Indy car at 220 m.p.h., he says, the aerodynamics are so good, you can pretty much floor it all the time. "You're thinking about what you're going to have for dinner while you're sitting there," he says. Stock cars are heavier, 700-h.p. Neanderthals, custom-built throwback machines. "At the end of a straightaway, you've got to use the brakes...
...daily pressure to create a winning race car that caused Stewart to pull himself over for a psychological pit stop. "I decided, 'I'm just going to up and go home,'" he said. It wasn't that Stewart disliked Charlotte (memo to Chamber of Commerce: he's still got a place there). It's that he just couldn't get away from the shop, which was only about 15 minutes from his house. So now Stewart spends time between races with his buddies, fishing or riding four-wheelers through the woods. "To be able to maintain a competitive edge...