Stewart playing in the dirt

Friday, March 2, 2001 | 10:51 a.m.

When the Pennzoil World of Outlaws opens it three-night show tonight at the half-mile dirt track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, several of the NASCAR Winston Cup drivers will saunter over from the superspeedway and check out the winged sprint cars.

One Winston Cup driver, however, will be more interested than the others.

Tony Stewart, who drives the No. 20 Home Depot Pontiac for Joe Gibbs Racing, will do double duty this weekend as an Outlaws car owner and crew member.

Last winter, Stewart formed his own Outlaws team and hired his friend, Danny Lasoski, as the driver.

Stewart said helping out his team this weekend will help take his mind off the pressures of Winston Cup racing.

"It's a good release for me to go out there and mess around with the car and just have a good time," Stewart said. "It's just my way of relaxing. The whole time I'm over at the dirt track, I'm not worried about what's going on next door at the big track with my Winston Cup car."

A former sprint-car driver himself, Stewart said he formed Stewart Motorsports primarily to help out another driver.

"I've been in the same position (Lasoski) has been in as a driver, as far as at the end of the year having your helmet in one hand, your seat in the other and wondering who you were going to be driving for the next year," Stewart said.

"He's got a wife and two kids and a new house and a new race shop. We're just trying to help him a little bit financially and give him the opportunity to save some money for the future and put his kids through college. At the same time, he has the security of not having to worry about who he's going to drive for at the end of the year."

And what does Stewart expect to accomplish through his Outlaws race team?

"We'd obviously like to win an Outlaws championship, but our main goal this first year is to have fun," he said. "At the same time, Danny wants to win races and that's how he makes his living.

"We feel like if we start this year by just going out and having fun, then we're going to win a lot of races. Once we start doing that, everything else will take care of itself."

Although he now is a team owner, Stewart said it hasn't given him an insight into what his Winston Cup car owner, Gibbs, goes through.

"I'm still not sure what Joe goes through on a regular basis," Stewart said. "But it has taken a lot of work to get the Outlaws team to where it is today, so I can only imagine what Joe had to do to build (Joe Gibbs Racing) into what it is. A lot of man hours went into our Outlaws team, where guys were working 20-hour days day after day to get the team ready to go in a relatively short amount of time.

"I'm really proud of what they've done and how hard they all have worked. I'm proud of our sponsors with Hamm of America and J.D. Byrider; their commitment and how excited they are to be a part of this, knowing that we've got a lot of growing to do, reminds me of the way Home Depot is with our Winston Cup team.

"It's exciting for all of us to come in at the ground level like this."