Nearly three years after he’d retired from NASCAR full-time, Tony Stewart had to get behind a stock car once again. Haas F1 team drivers Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen had arrived at the gates of the Circuit of the Americas to race in the 2019 U.S. Grand Prix, and the Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner took it upon himself to teach the outsiders what it was like to drive a 3,200-pound race car.
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Stewart’s Ford Mustang was fitted with a passenger seat for the demonstration run around the 3.426-mile circuit. The F1 drivers had little experience driving a race car with a roof before then but, surprisingly, managed to hold their own. “It’s been the best Thursday of the year by far,” quipped an elated Grosjean. “Tony Stewart giving you a ride in a NASCAR stock car is already something very unique, and then having the chance to drive it is pretty special.”
Grosjean’s closest experience to driving a stock car was in 2010 when he piloted a Ford GT1 in the FIA GT1 championship. Driving the Cup Series car left him in love with the noise the car made and the smooth gear transitions that it had. His counterpart Magnussen was equally thrilled as well. “It was awesome,” he said. “Always wanted to drive a NASCAR stock car and it was great to have Tony there, once again, driving one of his cars.”
That wasn’t the first time Magnussen was being guided by the 3X Cup Series champion. Stewart had taught him how to drive around in a 1,350-pound sprint car at the Carolina Speedway in 2018. But driving the Cup Series car was something different for him. He continued to note, “There’s something very raw about it. It’s very old-school and, what can I say, it’s just a bad-ass racecar.”
Tony Stewart left impressed by F1 drivers’ ability to pilot NASCAR car
Stewart co-owns his Cup Series outfit with Gene Haas – and hence the connection with the Haas F1 team. Following the drive-around, he expressed his surprise at how well the F1 duo had been able to adapt themselves to a car in which they had no experience before.
He said, “We put Kevin and Romain in a car that they’ve never been in before, and they went out and had a lot of fun and ran some pretty competitive lap times. It just shows why these guys got their opportunities in Formula One, and why they have that talent to do it.”
He also expressed that such talents were what made drivers like them truly elite and praised their natural ability to drive race cars. Driving around in a NASCAR car along with Tony Stewart himself must’ve been a unique and memorable experience for the drivers.
