“We did everything we could”: Tony Stewart looks back on recent weekend in NHRA racing for TSR Nitro

Tony Stewart fell just 0.0214 seconds short in the final round of the 12th NHRA DENSO Nationals at Sonoma Raceway. The Top Fuel rookie ended up second in his Tony Stewart Racing (TSR) Rinnai Dodge//SRT dragster, behind 77-time winner Antron Brown. Later on, Stewart put up a post on X (formerly Twitter), reflecting on his day.

Throughout his career in NASCAR as a race car driver, Tony Stewart has amassed 62 wins, 49 of which were in the Cup Series. He is the only driver to have won championships in both the IndyCar Series (1997) and the NASCAR Cup Series (2003, 2005 and 2011). Notably, the 53-year-old Columbus native was inducted into the prestigious NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2020.

Reflecting on his P2 finish at Sonoma, Tony Stewart wrote:

"This was a much better weekend than I anticipated. We didn’t really win anything, but we didn’t lose yesterday. In the final, we did everything we could as we left on one of the best Top Fuel leavers."

Despite qualifying 11th, Stewart was faster than Shawn Langdon, who qualified 4th. Following that, the former defeated Justin Ashley to advance to the semifinals and finally one-upped Ron August Jr. to make it to the final round. Even there, his reaction time was quicker than Brown's.

"To leave on Antron in the final is very big for me as a driver," Tony Stewart said. "We kept him honest and we made improvements with the car. We are checking boxes one at a time. We’ll take what we learned this weekend and try to make it better."

As of today, Stewart sits 9th in the NHRA Top Fuel standings with 617 points to his name. His next race is the NHRA Lucas Oil Nationals in Brainerd, Minnesota, from August 16th to 18th. The event will be broadcast by the FOX Network.

Tony Stewart dropped a major life update in style

Tony Stewart replaced his wife and 12-time Top Fuel winner, Leah Pruett, as the driver of the Rinnai Dodge//SRT dragster at the beginning of this season. Stewart and Pruett have been planning to start a family together, and therefore, the latter has opted to stay out of contention for the time being.

Stewart and his wife, Leah, are expecting their first child in November 2024. The 53-year-old NASCAR vet dropped the big news last month via a post on X. The post had a faux movie poster that had a picture of Stewart and Pruett on their wedding day. It read, "The long-awaited sequel to Let's Get Married."

"I’m so excited to start a family with this incredibly beautiful love of my life @LeahPruett_TF. Can’t wait to meet this little guy. This is the ultimate 🏆" said Stewart.

The post was also accompanied by a video that had a TSR dragster burning out with blue smoke, which then settled down, leaving behind the words "It's a boy" on the screen.