The Inside Line: Stewart still coping with tragedy

(SportsNetwork.com) – Seven weeks after his involvement in an accident that took the life of Kevin Ward Jr. during a sprint car race on a dirt track in Upstate New York, Tony Stewart continues to deal with emotions surrounding the tragic incident.

Even though Stewart will not face any criminal charges for his role in the death of Ward, it might take a very long time for his life to return to normalcy, perhaps never.

Stewart, the three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion and co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing, spoke to reporters on Monday at his team’s headquarters in Kannapolis, North Carolina. The 43-year-old Stewart answered a wide range of questions but did not talk specifically about the accident.

The incident happened during a caution in the Aug. 9 sprint car race at Canandaigua Motorsports Park. After Stewart had made contact with Ward, causing him to spin out and hit the wall, Ward climbed out of his wrecked car and walked down the dirt track to express his displeasure toward Stewart.

The right rear of Stewart’s car hit Ward and dragged him briefly across the track. Ward died from massive blunt trauma.

“Before the accident, I didn’t know Kevin,” Stewart said. “I don’t even know how many times I had raced with him. I race with that group (Empire Super Sprint Series) a couple of times a year. They’ve always been a great group to race with, but I didn’t know him.

“Obviously after the accident, I’ve read a lot about him, and from what I’ve read, I think he had a really promising career as a Sprint Car driver. It sounded like he was doing a good job and learning a lot at a young age, so I think he had a lot to look forward to.”

One day after the accident, Stewart released a statement offering his condolences toward Ward’s family. Stewart said on Monday that he is willing to talk with them in the future.

“I want to be available to them if they want to talk about it,” he said. “At this point, I don’t need to talk to them for closure. I know what happened, and I know it was an accident, but I’m offering to talk to them to help them, if it helps them with closure.”

While in seclusion following the accident at Canandaigua, Stewart missed the Sprint Cup races at Watkins Glen, Michigan and Bristol before returning to competition on the last weekend in August at Atlanta. His 14th-place run this past Sunday at Dover marked his best finish in the series since his return. He did not qualify for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

Last Wednesday, a grand jury in Ontario County, New York, cleared Stewart of any wrongdoing in Ward’s death. It did give him some sense of relief.

“Since we went back to Atlanta, basically, I go from the motor home to the car, and the car to the trailer, and the trailer back to the car, and that’s literally all I’ve done since I came back,” Stewart said. “Even after Wednesday here in Charlotte, I haven’t left my house. It’s just an awkward feeling.

“I think now I’ll start doing some more things. I’ve got a lot of friends who have been supportive through this entire thing, and there are a lot of people that have shown how much they cared. It would be nice to go and visit and talk to those people again.”

Stewart was in a state of depression while he was in seclusion at his Indiana home in the weeks that followed the incident.

“I didn’t really do much of anything to be perfectly honest,” he said. “I think the first three days that I was home I really didn’t do anything. I didn’t get out of bed. I didn’t care if I took a shower. I left my room to go get food, and that you almost had to make yourself eat. It’s the first three or four days I didn’t want to talk to anybody. Didn’t want to see anybody. I just wanted to be by myself.

His mood began to change just before the Atlanta race weekend.

“You finally get up and you finally start moving around a little bit and every day got a little bit easier, but it was a big, drastic change from what I was used to, for sure, not having the desire to do anything,” he noted. “All you thought about is what happened and asking yourself why. Why did this happen? So you just sat there for entire days on end, asking questions and trying to come to terms with what happened and why it happened.”

Stewart is currently 26th in the point standings, with just two top-five finishes and six top-10s for the season.

He will move forward with his Sprint Cup career but has no plans to compete in sprint car races in the future.

“Driving a race car is all that consumed my life,” Stewart said. “It’s all I thought about. It’s all I cared about. And everything else was second on down the list of priorities for me. I think this has given me the opportunity to sit here and think about other aspects of my life and what they’re going to mean to me in the future.”

After the grand jury’s determination not to charge Stewart, Ward’s family issued a statement, saying in it they “will pursue all remedies in fairness to Kevin.”

Stewart could face a civil suit from Ward’s family.

When Ontario County District Attorney Michael Tantillo announced the grand jury’s decision, he noted that a toxicology report had indicated Ward was under the influence of marijuana at the time Ward was competing in the race, and it was enough to impair his judgement.

“Honestly, for me, it didn’t change anything,” Stewart said of Ward’s toxicology report. “To me, a young driver lost his life. Didn’t matter why or what was going on. The end result was the same. No matter what was said, it was still a tragic accident. I just know in my heart that it was a hundred percent an accident. That detail didn’t mean anything to me personally.”

Categorized in: NASCAR