Drag racing isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s the mechanical equivalent of being fired out of a cannon while strapped to a nitroglycerin factory, and on Sunday at Maple Grove Raceway, we were reminded why.
Doug Kalitta and Tony Stewart lined up for the second round of Top Fuel eliminations, two veteran gladiators with dragsters that are basically guided missiles pretending to be cars. They launched, roared, and then things went completely sideways—literally.
Kalitta’s dragster, which decided steering was optional, blew a left front, skipped across the finish line, and barged into Stewart’s lane like a drunk crossing three lanes of traffic on I-95. Stewart’s car tipped up on its side, slammed back down, and gave the left guard wall a very expensive hug before finally stopping. Kalitta, meanwhile, wandered back over the center line before eventually calling it a day.
The crowd held its breath. But this is drag racing, not ballroom dancing—both men climbed out under their own power. Stewart was banged up, nursing a sore hand and a headache, but otherwise grinning the grin of a man who’s cheated worse crashes before.
Kalitta summed it up with a shrug you could almost hear through the noise: “The left (front) was down or blew, or whatever. It was just unfortunate. Really happened so quick, there was nothing I could really do. Fortunately, Tony and I are good. That’s really the main thing.” Translation: sometimes the universe throws you into another man’s lane, and you just roll with it.
For a man who’s spent decades going absurdly fast in straight lines, Kalitta admitted this was probably the worst shunt of his career. Stewart, however, brushed it off like he’d simply tripped over the dog in the driveway. “I don’t remember any of it. Not sure what happened, but it appears to be pretty massive. But I’ve been through sprint car crashes way worse than this. So, we’re good, I promise.”
That’s Tony Stewart for you. Crash hard enough to rattle your fillings, bang up your hand, then announce with a straight face that you’ll be racing again next weekend in Charlotte. Because when you live life at 330 miles per hour, hitting the wall is just another occupational hazard—like spilling coffee on your keyboard, only louder, scarier, and considerably more expensive.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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