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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
ROBERTS: The Original ‘Shrub’
Imagine a young driver from outside the Southeast arriving at Joe Gibbs Racing with a reputation for having a temper...
John Roberts  |  Posted June 08, 2009   Charlotte, NC
John Roberts is the host of NASCAR RaceDay, NASCAR Victory Lane and NASCAR Smarts on SPEED. (Photo: SPEED)
Imagine this scenario: A young driver from outside the Southeast arrives at Joe Gibbs Racing with a reputation for having a temper but he gets somewhat of a behavioral pass because he wins in every damn thing he drives.

The guy ruffles feathers among the media and fans because of the intense anger he displays when he doesn’t win. The management at JGR attempts to calm him down but that’s a tall order because the guy’s a winner and refuses to accept any less than first place. He consistently gets “booed” at driver introductions but just smiles and goes on to win races in his rookie year and many more down the road.

Kyle Busch, right? Try again (this guy didn’t smash a prized guitar at Nashville).

That’s a rough description of two-time champion Tony Stewart when he came to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. We criticized him for speaking his mind, racing hard but fair, and not accepting second place. At the time, those may have seemed like cardinal sins but looking back, Stewart was exactly what the sport needed.

Successful drivers fall into three categories: great competitors, proven winners and champions. Stewart has won championships in every series in which he has driven and I’d be the most surprised person around if he doesn’t win another one in the Cup Series in the next few years – perhaps even this year, his first as a Cup driver/owner. He’s well on his way, leading the Cup Series point standings two consecutive weeks and knocking off his first win with the new team Sunday at Pocono.

People haven’t liked everything Smoke has done. We can’t condone hitting photographers or knocking tape recorders out of reporters’ hands. But we can understand and empathize with a burning desire to compete and to win.

You can get a good idea of just how popular any particular win is by looking at the grandstands after a race. The frontstretch at Lowe’s Motor Speedway was packed with fans last month after Stewart won the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race and it remained that way for quite a while. Everyone wanted a glimpse of the next great Cup owner celebrating his first win as a driver/owner, and they all stuck around to see him shower his teammates with champagne. The crowd that gathered stayed put until Stewart visited our NASCAR Victory Lane stage and said that it doesn’t matter where his team celebrates, as long as they do it together.

The next time you go to a Sprint Cup race, observe the colors around you. A year ago, any given racetrack was a sea of green. AMP Energy and National Guard colors dominated the landscape in support of Dale Earnhardt Jr., and of course, we were drowning in an ocean of Budweiser red many years prior to that. But there is now a new color on the horizon - Office Depot red. The number 14 is tattooed onto a surprising number of fans’ bodies these days.

Granted, Stewart’s move to team ownership will net him many more millions of dollars but it’s also a move that shores up part of NASCAR’s future. As much as we’d like to clone Rick Hendrick or keep him in an ownership role forever, he’s a mere mortal like the rest of us. In announcing his new ownership role last year, Stewart said he had looked around and wondered where the next Cup owner would come from. Hendrick and his owner counterparts won’t live forever but Stewart, only 38, is stepping in to fill the eventual gap.

So, with all Smoke has accomplished as a driver and now an owner, coupled with everything he has meant to NASCAR, maybe we all had him pegged wrong 10 years ago and should have cut him a little more slack. Does that mean we possibly could be wrong about Kyle Busch and just might owe him the same courtesy? After all, he could be the next Tony Stewart.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

John Roberts is the host of NASCAR RaceDay, NASCAR Victory Lane and Tradin’ Paint on SPEED. He also hosts and reports from the garage on NASCAR Live and Go or Go Home and has been part of the FOX family since 2001. Roberts graduated from James Madison University and jokingly still considers himself a prospect for a top-rated college basketball team, namely the University of North Carolina Tar Heels.

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