"It's less than half the cost": Tony Stewart draws parallels between NASCAR and NHRA Drag Racing worlds

Former NASCAR Cup Series driver and North American motorsports veteran Tony Stewart has experience in all walks of racing. He has wheeled an open-wheeled IndyCar around The Brickyard, winning the famed Indy 500 and clinched a championship from behind the wheel of a Cup Series stock car.

Since his retirement, Tony Stewart has managed to keep himself busy with either grassroots dirt-track racing, or as introduced to by his wife, drag racing.

The NTT IndyCar Series champion is married to an NHRA top fuel dragster competitor in the form of Leah Pruett in 2021. This has only ignited his hunger further for drag racing as he dipped his feat into team ownership in the niche sport.

Tony Stewart owns the entries for his wife as well as Matt Hagan in the Funny Car series of the NHRA top fuel dragsters. He sat in the unique position of having experienced multiple avenues of motorsports from various angles.

Stewart recently elaborated on how different modern-day drag racing is from NASCAR, which is the most watched form of motorsports in the country. He elaborated in an interview with forbes.com:

“Well, it's a lot smaller operation, obviously, as far as personnel that it takes to do it all. I think total, we have around 25, 26 people at TSR that are just on the Nitro teams. Versus at one time, I think we were up to 385 or something at SHR."

He added:

"It costs less money to operate a Nitro team at a level that needs to be done at. When I say that I mean not cutting costs. But on the NHRA side versus the Cup side, I mean, it's less than half the cost of running a full-time Cup team."

Few team team owners, let alone drivers have such a level of insight ranging through all the different genres of motorsport, and certainly not in the modern era.

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Tony Stewart elaborates on how, despite the differences, running a race team is essentially the same

There are stark differences between a NASCAR Cup Series team and an NHRA Top Fuel dragster team. However, Tony Stewart recently emphasised how it is essentially the same.

He has to manage what is a big operation but once scale is taken out of the equation, winning at the track is the same underlying goal. The Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner elaborated on the ownership side:

“It's attention to detail and it's people, it's hiring the right people to do the right jobs. It's this way in all aspects of it whether it's the NASCAR program, sprint car program, an NHRA program, having the right people in the right positions is absolutely one of the biggest keys.”

Tony Stewart will be seen racing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the NHRA Nevada Nationals on Friday, October 27, 2023, as an owner in the series.