Known for his insane racing resume, Tony Stewart has had his hands on almost every major racing machinery. To date, he has run IndyCar, NHRA, Midget, Sprint, and, of course, all 3 tiers of NASCAR. At this point, one would think nothing could impress ‘Smoke’ anymore. But it seems his ‘kid in a candy store’ moment came when he drove an F1 car.

Very few NASCAR drivers have been inside an F1 car, but Stewart was one of them when he drove Lewis Hamilton’s championship-winning McLaren MP4-23 at Watkins Glen. Shedding light on the technical aspects of the impressive piece of engineer, Stewart, on the HOT ROD Pod, shared his experience. Moreover, he revealed why F1 drivers, more often than not, take each other out in the name of competition.

Tony Stewart highlights the technical aspect of driving an F1 car

It was a cold, damp afternoon at the Watkins Glen International when Lewis Hamilton and Tony Stewart swapped their rides. Stewart drove the McLaren Mercedes, while Hamilton got his hands on the No. 14 Chevy from NASCAR’s sprint series. Although Stewart had experience driving an open-wheel car, driving an F1 car was exceptional.

Strangely, what really took Stewart by surprise was not the 750 horses that the car was packing or its extreme cornering abilities. Apparently, it was the MP4-23’s braking performance. To put it briefly, F1 cars have to have powerful brakes in order to rightly take on the short braking zone. Stewart was quite taken aback seeing how challenging it is for F1 drivers to get a competitive edge while dealing with such small margins. In addition to this, he even gave his explanation as to why there are frequent accidents in Formula 1.

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Stewart said, “I always wondered why do these guys go down and plough into each other or every time they try to pass they wreck. I’m like, surely these guys know how to race each other, and then when you get into one of those cars, you realize how short the braking zone is.”

“And how much further you have to go than the next guy to get the position. It all makes sense why they crash into each other all the time. It’s that small of a braking zone that you gotta make up a lot of distance in a short time.” 

Talking of wrecks, Tony Stewart surely knows a thing or two about them, or more specifically how to deal with them on a racetrack.

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Tony Stewart vs. Matt Kenseth during the 2006 All-star race

In 2006, Tony Stewart was a contender to win the Nextel All-Star Challenge at Lowe Motor Speedway. At the end of the first segment, Stewart ran in second place. However, with the start of the second segment, the race started to fall apart for him as a spin by Michael Waltrip on lap 45 resulted in a big one. Stewart’s #20 Chevy Monte Carlo underwent quick patch repairs by the JGR team and was soon chasing a podium finish.

With the final 20 laps to go, it felt like Stewart could end up in the top three places, but it was not to be. Matt Kenseth and Stewart got involved in a wreck as they tried to cut each other on the corners for the third-place finish. This also saw both of them engaged in a war of words. Stewart had enough and ran the fender of his car to the inside of Kenseth’s quarter panel, resulting in a crash. Both the cars headed out to the garage with the podium finish out of sight.

Such on-track battles are indeed fun to watch. However, the drivers need to make sure they don’t push the limit, putting the lives of other drivers on the line. This is one thing that Stewart hates, as he explained in the same podcast.

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