Tony Stewart not reconsidering retirement after back injury
No, Tony Stewart is not preparing a Sprint Cup comeback in 2017.
The three-time Cup Series champion currently sidelined because of a back injury is keeping his retirement plans final. While he’ll be driving sprint cars and potentially other vehicles that aren’t in the Cup Series, the final race of the 2016 season will be Stewart’s last in a Cup car.
“That’s what we said in the announcement last year that this year would be the last year,” Stewart said Friday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “I’m not going to change the plan because I got hurt.”
Are you sure you don’t want to come back, Smoke?
“No, not even one percent considering it,” Stewart said.
“There’s races that I want to run. I honestly am trying to figure out how I could run the Truck race at Eldora [a track Stewart owns]. It sounds easy to sign up and do it. I got a lot of responsibilities. But I’d love to run the Truck race there.”
Brian Vickers is driving for Stewart at Las Vegas. Stewart said he has X-Rays on the fractured L1 vertebra in his back next week and his recovery from the injury suffered in a dirt buggy accident will proceed accordingly.
“Like I say, that’s kind of why we’re anxious to get these x-rays done, to kind of figure out where we’re at,” Stewart said. “We really don’t have any clue how far this has gone since the surgery. I’m probably more eager than anybody to know what the result of this is going to be.”
He said he was hopeful of obtaining a waiver for Chase eligibility once he gets back into the car. NASCAR currently mandates that drivers must attempt to qualify for every race on the schedule to make the Chase but has been quite liberal with waivers disregarding that rule.
The sanctioning body missed an opportunity this offseason to simplify the rule to simply say a driver must be in the top 30 in points (and have a win) to make the Chase. Instead, the waiver process continues and Stewart could get one. Eventual Sprint Cup Series champion Kyle Busch (and his brother Kurt after a suspension) got one last year after he missed the first 11 races of the year because of injuries suffered at Daytona.
“Whatever they decide they decide,” Stewart said. “I would like to think it’s going to be similar to what they did last year with Kyle.”
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
