SRX Racing: Tony Stewart Wins on the Dirt Track at Eldora

Superstar Racing Experience, the new motorsports event launched by NASCAR hall of famers Tony Stewart and Ray Evernham, along with investor George Pyne, officially launched earlier this month. We’re now three races into the SRX Racing series, and the intensity is ratcheting up. The third race took place on June 26 at the famed Eldora Speedway in Ohio, and despite a strong showing from second-place finisher Kody Swanson, Tony Stewart nabbed the win. It was an important victory for Stewart—in addition to founding the new league, he’s also the owner of the track he raced on.

It was a thrilling race from start to finish. Stewart struggled with issues early on—he accidentally hit the skill switch on his car and was forced to return to pit road, then start the race from the back of the field. Swanson, an accomplished dirt track racer, was forced to use a backup car after he was involved in a crash earlier in the night.

Paul Tracy led for the first 25 laps, but Swanson and Stewart battled their way toward the front of the pack. Swanson forged ahead along the bottom of the track, while Stewart mostly remained on the high side, biding his time until later in the race, when he made a run for the front.

“Kody found the bottom. I couldn’t roll the bottom as good as he could. I was real dependent on being up on the top,” Stewart told CBS after the race. “The good thing was when he went by everybody else, they all followed him down there like they were in a parade and left the top open. And the longer we went, I finally got the momentum going on the top and got back by.”

With the win on Saturday, Stewart completed his sweep of the dirt track races (the other one was at Knoxville Raceway) in this year’s SRX Racing series. We’ll see if he can find similar success on the pavement: The next race will take place at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis on July 3.

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