Tony Stewart on sprint car return: 'I'm going to live my life'

Tony Stewart enjoyed his sprint-car test Monday, and he appears close to resuming his extracurricular racing again as he continues to recover from his August 2013 crash.

Stewart, talking to reporters Friday at Dover International Speedway, said he hopes to make his return to sprint-car racing on the down low.

'Nobody is going to know about it (ahead of time),' said Stewart, who broke his leg during a serious sprint car crash last year. 'I'm going to just slide in and do it. I want to enjoy it. I don't want it to be a cluster.

'Judging off the fact of how many people showed up just to talk to me about going and testing for a couple of hours, I can imagine what the group is going to be like after I run my first race.'

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Stewart required three surgeries when a torque bar pierced his right leg, breaking it in two places, in a crash Aug. 5 at Southern Iowa Speedway. He missed the final 15 races of the NASCAR Sprint Cup season.

That wreck won't stop Stewart from getting back in a winged sprint car, a style of racing he has an incredible passion for as a competitor, a team owner and as owner of Eldora Speedway and other dirt ovals.

'I'm going to live my life,' Stewart said. 'It's nobody else's decision but mine. I think there are a lot worse things I could be doing with my life than what I choose to do.'

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Stewart spent about four hours testing Monday.

'It wasn't just going out and making laps,' Stewart said. 'We actually got a chance to run through a lot of shock stuff and set-up stuff. (I'm) ready to go again.' Stewart's recovery from the injury hasn't gone exactly as planned. He is winless and 22nd in the Cup standings after 12 races. He also is still going through therapy.

'I honestly thought I would be done with all this by now,' Stewart said. 'As far as rehab, pain, all that stuff, I thought it would all be done. I thought we would be healed 100 percent by now.

'But (I) keep going to the doctor on our scheduled appointments and they keep updating us on how it's going and what they think the outlook is for it.'

It isn't the most enjoyable thing for Stewart, who would rather do his training in his sprint car.

'I hate it,' Stewart said. 'You sweat, you get out of breath, it is crazy. Then you feel sore. I don't know anything about this that is good, but I know at the end of the day it's going to make me feel a lot better.'

When Stewart starts dirt racing again, he might have less time for Twitter. He began tweeting a couple of weeks ago and still worries that saying one bad thing could destroy all the fun.

'The risk versus reward isn't very good on this deal for people in our position, but you realize why it's cool for the fans, too,' Stewart said. 'It's cool for me to see what is on their minds. I think I'm having as much fun reading what they are writing as they are about what I'm putting on there.'

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