10 notable moments of Tony Stewart’s career (so far)

Three-time Sprint Cup Series champion Tony Stewart said Wednesday that 2016 will be his final season in the Sprint Cup Series. Following Jeff Gordon’s retirement announcement in January we noted 10 moments from Gordon’s career. And given that Stewart is also a surefire Hall of Famer, he gets the same treatment.

Here are 10 of the defining moments of Tony Stewart’s racing career. The list includes both the positive and the negative and aren’t in any specific order.

Winning the 2011 Sprint Cup Championship: You can credit Stewart with NASCAR’s current one-race-winner-take-all-at-Homestead Chase format.

Stewart entered the 2011 Chase winless. He won the first race of the Chase at Chicago and proceeded to win four of the first eight races, while Carl Edwards stayed at the top of the points standings thanks to a bunch of top-10s. The two drivers entered the Chase’s final race at Homestead incredibly close in the standings and if Stewart got a fifth win, he’d win the title over Edwards no matter what the driver of the No. 99 did.

Edwards out-qualified Stewart and he was near the front all day while Stewart dropped back as his team fixed some minor damage early in the race. It was apparent the two had the two fastest cars of the weekend and thanks to a gutsy pit call and the timing of a yellow flag for rain, Stewart and Edwards raced heads-up for the title.

It was the greatest race in NASCAR’s Chase era. Stewart kept Edwards at an arm’s length over the final 30 laps for his fifth win while Edwards finished second. The two ended the Chase tied on points, but since Stewart had those five victories to Edwards’ one, he was crowned the champion.

Striking Kevin Ward in August 2014: A fun sprint car excursion the night before the Watkins Glen race turned sour after Stewart and Ward were racing together. Ward’s car hit the wall and he angrily exited his car to confront Stewart. As he walked down the track he gestured towards Stewart’s car and was hit by the right rear tire. He was pronounced dead a short time later.

After a lengthy investigation, Stewart was not ultimately criminally charged by an Ontario County (NY) grand jury. The Ontario County District Attorney said there was no evidence of aberrational driving by Stewart and Stewart has maintained that the incident was 100 percent an accident.

Stewart returned to the Sprint Cup Series after missing three races. He crashed in his first race back at Atlanta. In August of 2015, almost one year to the day, the Ward family filed a civil wrongful death lawsuit against Stewart. The case is pending.

Winning five of seven races in 2005: Stewart won his second Sprint Cup title in 2005 and his first in the Chase era. And while he had an exceptional Chase, his season is more remembered for the remarkable summer run he had. Stewart won at Sonoma, Daytona, Loudon, Indianapolis and Watkins Glen in a stretch of seven races. He finished fifth and seventh in the other two races. The five wins also came within a stretch of 13 straight top-10 finishes.

The streak of top-10s ended at Dover in the second race of the Chase and Stewart slipped to fifth in the standings. But he moved up to first after finishing second at Talladega a week later and led the rest of the season.

Suffering a broken leg in an August 2013 sprint car accident: Stewart missed the remainder of the Cup season after suffering a gnarly compound fracture in his lower right leg in a sprint car accident in Iowa.

Stewart was racing for fun when he was caught up in a crash and a piece of the car smashed his leg. He underwent multiple surgeries for the injury and has a nasty scar on his leg. The wreck also came not long after he was involved in an accident in a sprint car race in Canada.

Stewart returned to the Sprint Cup circuit on crutches and a scooter not long after the accident and was back in the cockpit for the 2014 Daytona 500.

Coming up short in the Daytona 500: Stewart has had a ton of success at Daytona. He’s won the Coke Zero 400, the Daytona 500 qualifying races and the Sprint Unlimited exhibition race. He’s just never won the Daytona 500.

His list of Daytona heartbreaks is Earnhardtian at this rate. He blew an engine and completed two laps in 2002, the season of his first Cup title. He crashed while leading with Kurt Busch with 50 laps to go in 2007. And he was leading on the last lap in 2008 when he was passed by Ryan Newman.

Stewart has one more shot to win the Daytona 500 in 2016. Given his career to date, we won’t count him out. But we’re also cognizant of the ways Stewart has lost Daytona 500s throughout his 17-year career. If he doesn’t win in 2016, he’ll finish his career 0-18 in NASCAR’s biggest race.

Moving to Stewart-Haas Racing: Many people wondered what the heck Stewart was doing when he left Joe Gibbs Racing after the 2008 season. But Gene Haas had offered him a deal too good to pass up.

Haas was fielding a struggling two-car team and offered Stewart 50-percent stake in the team if he’d come on board. Stewart agreed and the team hired Ryan Newman to be its second driver.

Stewart won his first points race for the team in June of 2009 and 15 of his 48 career Cup Series wins are with SHR. The team, which formed a strong technical alliance with Hendrick Motorsports when Stewart arrived, is now a four-car team with three Sprint Cup champions on its roster. The team also has two Cup Series titles in the past five seasons after Kevin Harvick won the 2014 title.

Winning the USAC Triple Crown: Sprint car racing has always been Stewart’s racing love and he became widely known as an up-and-coming driver when he won the USAC Triple Crown in 1995. Stewart was the first driver to win USAC’s Silver Crown, Sprint Car and Midget Car classes and only J.J. Yeley has been able to repeat the feat.

A year after winning the Triple Crown, Stewart had a ride in the IndyCar Series.

Winning the 1997 IndyCar title: Stewart competed in three IndyCar races in 1996. One of those was the Indianapolis 500, where he qualified first and led 44 laps before an engine failure took him out of the running before the race was even halfway over.

A year later, Stewart was an IndyCar champion. He won at Pikes peak in June and took home the series title at Las Vegas by finishing 11th. He beat Davey Hamilton by six points in his first of two full-time seasons in the series. He finished third in 1998 as he did double-duty between IndyCar and what’s now the Xfinity Series.

A roller-coaster week in 2002: Stewart was frustrated after the 2002 Brickyard 400 and took his emotions out on an Indianapolis Star photographer. Stewart punched the photographer in the chest following the race as the photographer took pictures of Stewart walking through the garage. Stewart was put on probation by Joe Gibbs Racing and fined by NASCAR.

He ended up winning the next race at Watkins Glen, leading the final 19 laps and pulling away from Ryan Newman.

Winning his first Sprint Cup race: Stewart ran 22 races in the Xfinity Series in 1998 and had five top-five finishes. A year later he was in the Cup Series. Stewart was in the top-10 in the standings after the eighth race of the year and stayed there the rest of the way,

He got his first win at Richmond in the 25th race of the season when he led 333 of the race’s 400 laps. After three more top-five finishes over the next seven races, Stewart then won at Phoenix and Homestead. He finished fourth in the standings.