Stewart to wear hat as owner

Thursday, Nov. 2, 2000 | 10:19 a.m.

Tony Stewart, who rose through the sprint-car ranks to win an Indy Racing League championship and NASCAR Winston Cup's Rookie of the Year award, is returning to his roots as a World of Outlaws team owner.

Stewart formally announced on Wednesday that he will field an Outlaws car for driver Danny Lasoski under the Tony Stewart Motorsports banner beginning in 2001. Lasoski, who has 25 A-Feature wins in the Pennzoil World of Outlaws series, also will serve as general manager of the team.

"I get homesick a lot (for) the open-wheel cars -- even though I never ran a World of Outlaws sprint car," Stewart said during a press conference at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "I always ran the non-winged sprint cars with USAC ... but this has been a series that I've really wanted to become involved with in one shape or another.

"It was actually Danny's idea, a little over a year ago, to form a team ... and I cannot think of a better driver that I would want to build a program around."

The No. 20 Outlaws car will feature JD Byrider as the primary sponsor and Hamm America as a major associate sponsor.

"I found, in the 21 years that I've been racing, that if you surround yourself with good people, great things will happen," Stewart said. "I have been associated with JD Byrider for two years now and Danny has had a very good relationship with (Hamm America) ... and I feel like they're the right people for our program."

Lasoski, who has been friends with Stewart for several years, said he isn't worried about going to work for someone with whom he is so close -- and who is so competitive.

"We both are the world's worst losers -- we both absolutely, positively hate to lose," Lasoski said. "I think that's what's great about him and I doing this team: We both are racers, we both want to win, but we understand we can't win every day."

Although Stewart has been vocal about the amount of personal time Winston Cup racing takes away from him, he said he does not view this latest venture as additional work.

"Everybody asks, 'Why do you want to get involved in this with all the time that we don't seem to have with our Winston Cup schedule?' and it's because this is my release," Stewart said.

"I can't drive open-wheel cars like I used to because of the conflicts with Winston Cup sponsors and Winston Cup owners worrying about their drivers getting hurt. This is a great way for me to still feel like I'm involved in open-wheel racing. It's fun for me."

While the World of Outlaws doesn't enjoy the same popularity as NASCAR's Winston Cup Series, Stewart said he hopes that by getting into the Outlaws series he can expose the winged sprint cars to new legions of fans.

"We're with the most popular racing series in the country right now and we get a chance to turn our heads around and look back in the other direction," he said. "As far as we're concerned, the Outlaws series is the fastest growing and is the series with the most growing potential at this time.

"With races at tracks like Las Vegas, Charlotte, Texas and Bristol ... they're introducing sprint-car racing to a whole different market of fans."

An estimated 8,000 fans watched Sammy Swindell race to his 10th preliminary feature win of the season in the Z-Max Silver State Shootout Wednesday night at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway half-mile dirt oval.

In a race that didn't end until after 12:30 a.m., Swindell passed pole-sitter Andy Hillenburg on the backstretch of the first lap and held on for the victory in the main event, which was shortened to 15 laps (from 20) because of multiple crashes.

It was the opinion of several drivers that the rough track conditions -- which forced the postponement of Tuesday's racing -- led to the three red-flag situations.

"It was real difficult out there," Swindell said. "It was a tough track -- I know it was hard for everybody -- and hopefully we'll get it turned around here for Friday."

Hillenburg took second and Greg Hodnett finished third.

World of Outlaws champion Steve Kinser was the fastest qualifier Wednesday night and was challenging Swindell for the lead on the fifth lap before dropping out of the raced with a broken drive line.

Hillenburg won the six-lap Channellock Dash and Daryn Pittman won the 10-lap B-Feature.

The Silver State Shootout concludes Friday night.