Update: Tony Stewart

His team, Tony Stewart Racing , fields two entries in the USAC Midget and Sprint car divisions and two entries in the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series.

Championships begat championships for Stewart, as the Columbus, Ind.-native came to NASCAR in 1999 by way of the IRL IndyCar Series, where he was the series champion in 1997.

We’ve been decent all the way up until that qualifying run right there,” said Stewart, who won the Sprint Cup race at Kansas in 2006.

The driver of the No. 20 Home Depot Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series has scored 11 championships since he first wheeled a go-kart at a Westport, Ind., race track in 1978.

Anthony Wayne Stewart is an American race car driver/car owner/entrepreneur, in NASCAR ’s Sprint Cup.

Stewart’s racing career began at age seven behind the wheel of a go-kart, with his father, Nelson, serving as car owner and crew chief.

Tony Stewart had a relatively uneventful 400-mile Sunday drive at Dover International Speedway.

However an incident at the first race of The Chase at New Hampshire International Speedway dashed hopes of a second series title.

After winning the Midget title in 1994 and finishing 10th and sixth in the Sprint and Silver Crown divisions, respectively, Stewart went out and set a new standard of excellence in 1995 by winning all three divisions.

He is a two-time winner of the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard , a three-time winner of the season-opening NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway and a two-time winner of the famed Chili Bowl, an all-star Midget race at the Tulsa Expo Raceway.

No driver had ever won the Sprint, Midget and Silver Crown championships – divisions that run three very different types of race cars which compete on both asphalt and dirt – in a single season until Stewart came along.

He currently drives the #20 Home Depot Toyota Camry for Joe Gibbs Racing, under crew chief Greg Zipadelli.

A hint of Stewart’s impending success could be seen when he was still a youngster, for in 1980 at age eight, Stewart had won his first championship – a 4-cycle rookie junior class championship at the Columbus Fairgrounds.

Tony Stewart started eighth and finished eighth in Sunday’s Sylvania 300 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon.

Stewart had complained about a sore foot from a wreck which occurred the day before in the Nationwide Series race at Las Vegas.

A slate of 22 NASCAR Nationwide Series races with Joe Gibbs Racing in 1998 prepared Stewart for his assault on the Cup ranks in 1999.

The highlights of the year were winning the Hut Hundred and 4-Crown Nationals.

In 1996, Tony made his NASCAR Busch Series debut, driving for car owner Harry Rainer.

He has also won championships in USAC and the IROC series.

And before he made his mark in Indy cars, Stewart made a name for himself in the rough-and-tumble world of the United States Auto Club.

Jeff Gordon pulled a “bump and run ” on Stewart to gain a better finishing position in a race in Bristol, and it resulted in Stewart retaliating in a post-race incident by spinning Gordon out on pit road.

The two-time Sprint Cup Series champion earned his first crown in 2002 by beating veteran racer Mark Martin by 38 points and a second in 2005 when he bested Greg Biffle by 35 points.

Two more karting championships followed, but this time on a national level – the 1983 International Karting Federation Grand National championship and the 1987 World Karting Association National championship.

The second half of his season was plagued by an altercation with a photographer after the Brickyard 400.

Tony Stewart’s 2005 Allstate 400 at the Brickyard winning car on display at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway museum.

In 2004, Stewart teamed with Englishman Andy Wallace and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in a Boss Motorsports Chevrolet to take fourth in the 24 Hours of Daytona sports car race.

In 1995, Stewart became the hottest driver to win USAC’s version of the Triple Crown, earning championships in all three of USAC’s major divisions, National Midget, Sprint, and Silver Crown.

During that remarkable rookie season, where Stewart won three races en route to the rookie of the year title, he also competed in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 on the same day.

Then when I got in the Indy Racing League it was ‘Smoke’ because one of the guys on the crew who was my roommate, and knew the nickname, carried it over to the IndyCar team.