Tony Stewart's highly anticipated NASCAR comeback is now just days away, and the three-time Cup Series champion has revealed all on his preparation ahead of the event.
Stewart retired from NASCAR racing in 2016, but is now set to make what is currently a one-off return in the Truck Series at Daytona International Speedway this Friday (Feb. 13).
The 54-year-old will drive the No. 25 Ram for Kaulig Racing in Florida this week as part of the former's Free Agent Program, which is designed to bring legendary drivers and rising stars into that specific truck this season.
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Tony Stewart on Daytona preparations
Fans across the country are now excited to see how Stewart gets on in what will be his first Truck Series outing since 2005, when he failed to qualify at Richmond for Kevin Harvick Inc.
With that in mind, he confirmed that he would be putting in the preparation with spotter TJ Bell in the build up to the event.
“Have I prepared for this race? 100 percent no,” Stewart admitted to Oval Insider and other media late last month. “I have not looked at any video of it yet.
“I absolutely will going into the race. TJ Bell is my spotter, and I talked to TJ a couple weeks ago and he's going to start looking at video and instead of [me] trying to watch the entire truck race, he's going to go pick through some video and try to find scenarios and situations that he thinks we need to focus on.
“So instead of me having to watch hours of footage of truck races at Daytona, he's gonna try to narrow it down for us and get us some footage that he thinks will be really important to us and things that we have to focus on."
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Stewart: iRacing biggest NASCAR comeback tool
Continuing further, Stewart also revealed that he and Bell would be using iRacing as a huge part of their preparations. In fact, the 54-year-old went as far as to describe it as the single biggest tool he will be using ahead of his comeback.
“TJ and I are actually getting ready to start doing some work on iRacing together,” he continued. “TJ can literally get on and be my spotter on there, and I've been running a bunch of races on iRacing just to get an idea.
"I don't know exactly apples to apples if it's the same, but just running a lot of restrictor plate races on iRacing to try to get acclimated again and get used to it. So we’ll try to pair up a bunch of those things.
“Simple things like communication, we're not going to get to do any drafting practice, so for TJ and I, just the communication gap of how he calls the race from the spotter stand and the information that I'm hearing from him and how I decide on it, those are things that we have to work through before we get down there.
“So we're literally going to spend time with iRacing and try to sort through all that so that once we get down to Daytona we don't have to worry about that variable till the race starts and that gives me the flexibility just to focus on learning the truck and learning what to do in the draft with the truck versus sitting there going, ‘What did he say?’ and ‘What does that mean? What’s he trying to tell me?’ So we are doing homework.
“We are trying to get as prepared as we can, and for me personally, the iRacing side of it is the single biggest tool I'm using to get ready for Daytona. But film will be a part of that.”
