NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers are generally quick to point out the sacrifices their parents made along the way to a successful career.
Tony Stewart, though, was quite forthcoming about the impact of his mom, Pam Boas, on his championship-winning career.
Asked Monday during the NASCAR Sprint Media Tour hosted by Charlotte Motor Speedway to explain the impact his mother had on his career, Stewart laughed as he offered his response.
“My Mom and I had a huge fight because she wanted me to go to college,” he said, then paused before adding. “Now she works for me. That is the truth, too.”
Teammate Ryan Newman, who carries an engineering degree from Purdue University, quickly chimed in: “I didn’t fight mine. I went to college.”
“It worked out the same for both of us in different ways,” Stewart said.
Then, the three-time Sprint Cup champion, owner of Eldora Speedway and co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing, offered a more serious take that showed his true appreciation for his mother.
“I was really fortunate in the fact that not only my mother but my father and my sister all really gave up a lot so my whole family could follow my passion of racing,” he said. “I don’t encourage this with a lot of mothers, but I know my mother hated a lot of Fridays when we were running national go-kart races and I would be in a different state and she was calling the school and having to lie every week and say I was sick knowing very well that the teachers had already given me my homework and I was on the road with it.
“She was very dedicated and is still very dedicated to what we do and she loves watching us race. She’s probably the one that’s the most nervous watching us every weekend. . . . She knows how passionate we are for it, and she’s seen some of the best and worst times of it with crashes and everything else and she’s always been there 100 percent.”
