NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers Dave Blaney, Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne, 3-time and defending All Star Circuit of Champions racer Dale Blaney and New York Modified legend Jack Johnson raced at Sharon Speedway on Tuesday in the inaugural Lou Blaney Memorial Classic.

Stewart won the 30-lap Sprint car feature while Johnson captured the 30-lap Modified event.

Prior to the race, the five drivers sat down to talk to the media on several topics.

Q: Talk about being here and racing in the Lou Blaney Classic.

Stewart: I’m excited about it. It’s something that all of us obviously enjoy doing. We just don’t get a chance to do it as much as we would like. That’s the great thing about Dave — he’s always invited us every year to come up and run Modified or Sprint cars. We’re real appreciative of that and excited about it.

Q: Tell us about the kind of driver that Lou was?

Stewart: I didn’t get to run with him much. I got to run with him once in the Big Blocks here, and learned really quick that there’s a potential to get older as I go because he basically blew by me and drove by me to where I couldn’t see him after about eight laps in my first time here. He was awesome. He was calm, cool and collected and he’s got two sons that are the same way.

Q: What’s it going to be like to get in the Sprint car and race?

Stewart: It’s fun. I ran them without the wings in my career, so this wing side of it is new to me but it’s something I’m real fascinated by. It’s a lot of fun and a different aspect from what I’m used to. I always look forward to it. It’s something I’m still not real good at, not as good as Dave and Dale and Kasey and these guys, but it’s something that I really look forward to and having my own team, it makes me want to get out and drive more.

Q: Decline in NASCAR numbers; do you think any of that is correlated with the fact that the majority of the drivers today aren’t like you guys, who grew up in dirt and have an existing fan base that allows them to hit the ground running.

Stewart: I don’t think so. I think some of it’s the economy and people are scrambling right now. That seems to be the biggest factor. That’s the great thing that we’ve seen at our tracks is that people that can’t afford to go to NASCAR tracks are supporting short tracks and that’s good for the health of all auto racing. It starts here at race tracks just like this and you never know where the next Kasey Kahne or Dave Blaney is going to come from. I mean it may be here tonight and we don’t know about it yet. We may be racing with them and at the end of the night you go, ‘Hey, maybe this is somebody we gotta watch.’

Q: Talk about going from racing Sprint cars to the biggest series in racing.

Kahne: I really enjoy this type of racing. I came from Midgets and Sprints, All-Stars, USAC, all those different series’ was the route that I took to get to where I am now. It seems like there’s other people coming in from different series’, there’s so many different series’ around the country that are great learning experiences. Everybody learns differently. You can learn how to drive in all types of cars, so we all did it through the Sprint cars and really enjoy it. It’s neat to be part of that and watch other kids and other guys come through there and try to learn how to race.

Q: Talk about racing in the Lou Blaney Classic.

Kasey: I’m excited that we were invited up here. I enjoy racing at Sharon Speedway. I’ve raced here a lot of times at the old Sharon and new Sharon. I never raced with Lou Blaney, but I’ve heard a lot of different stories on him — being one of the best guys on the ‘cushion.’ He was just always was really good on the dirt. It’s exciting to be a part of it. He was an awesome race-car driver and I’m glad that I’m here and supporting Lou Blaney.

Q: Any resolution to Sprint Cup restrictor plate racing?

Kahne: Everybody goes for it and with the drafting and trying to get runs on other cars, you’re going to have that. It’s part of Talladega, it’s part of Daytona. Coming down to the end, people bump. You’re going to have that. It’s part of that type of racing, and we ended up getting underneath Kyle’s car (at Daytona on Saturday). We just drove right through him pretty much and that was the way our race finished. We still finished decent, had a pretty good points night. It’s just that type of racing. We got by Mark Martin (in the points) and we’re sitting in a pretty good spot right now. We’ve had, I’d say the last seven or eight weeks, we’ve been right there in the top 10. We’ve been right there each week, so I feel like we’ve had great cars and the team is doing awesome and we’ll just keep working on building on that and figuring out how to make ‘The Chase.’

Q: What will it do for your confidence now that you’re back in ‘The Chase?’

Kasey: I think that it doesn’t really mean anything because you have to be in there when it comes down to Richmond. That’s when you want to be in ‘The Chase.’ The last couple years we’ve been right there and then we’d fall out right at the end. So I’d like to be a little more comfortably in ‘The Chase,’ but there’s a lot of good cars, good drivers and teams. We just need to be competitive each week and get the most points we can and hopefully we’ll be part of ‘The Chase’ at the end of the year.

Q: Are you excited about Indianapolis?

Kasey: I’m actually looking forward to a lot of these tracks — Chicago, Indianapolis — that’s one of the top races that we go to each year. Our cars have been awesome lately, so I’m looking foward to everywhere we’re going. The Allstate 400 is a great race to win, so we’ll keep building and try to get better and better.

Q: How important is it to do races like this and connect with the fans?

Kahne: I’ve always been into short-track dirt racing, I just love it. It’s a huge part of where I came from and what I still really enjoy being a part of. I like coming out and mingling with the fans, racing and enjoying ourselves at these tracks and trying to win. It’s hard to win these races and I haven’t won a dirt race in a long time. The more we do it the better you get at it, so I’ll keep working at it and try to win.

Q: Same question for “Smoke.”

Stewart: It’s big for us. Kasey owns short-track teams, I own short-track teams and 3 racetracks. It’s very important to us because that’s what we’re passionate about. It’s not just for us to come out just to come out. We come out because we’re very passionate about short-track racing, especially dirt tracks. It’s something we enjoyed growing up and you enjoy going back to that, so it’s a great chance for people that don’t get a chance to come to the Cup races on the weekends to be able to come out and see their heroes up close. It gives us a night to get closer to them.

Q: What’s been the key to your season?

Stewart: Just good people. We’ve got really good people doing their jobs and with that we are getting really good results. (At this point a media member joked, “You told me it was the driver”). That’s what I wanted you to believe, but I just told them the truth (laughs). It’s been a great year, obviously. I mean, anytime you make a big change like we did it’s an unknown variable and you can be either really good or really bad, and we’ve been very fortunate that it’s gone very well.

Q: What’s been the biggest difference about being a car owner?

Stewart: It hasn’t been that much different, other than I can be late to team meetings and I don’t get yelled at like I used to. (laughs). We’ve been really fortunate. Our deal is a little different than situations like Michael Waltrip and Robby Gordon and some of these guys, in that they started from square one and started from scratch. We were able to come in from an existing organization.

Q: How much of a battle is there between Kasey and Tony with their World of Outlaw teams and their drivers Joey Saldana and Donny Schatz always running up front?

Stewart: It’s funny because we sit there in the drivers’ meetings and say, ‘Hey, good job last night.’ That’s kind of the way we look at it. We just hope it’s one of our two teams that’s in Victory Lane. You guys (media) all want to make big rivalries out of nothing.

(At this point, one of the media members says: Every great story has got a hero and a villian)

Stewart: Every great story has a great writer, and that’s what we’re losing. We’re losing great writers, so they got to try and come up with an angle. No, we’re excited about it. I can speak for Kasey in this because we talk about it all the time, but we love doing it. We love giving back to short-track racing. Whether it’s our World of Outlaw teams or USAC teams, we’ve always been supportive of each other and what we’re doing. It’s not just our two teams. There’s a lot of great race-car drivers and great race teams out there every week that we have to worry about beating, other than ourselves, so we’re just happy when one of us wins.

Q: Ever give a thought about trying NASCAR?

Johnson: Honestly, I was too busy doing what I was doing and making a good living at it. I never really put too much thought into it. The last time I was here it was a 5/8-mile dirt track, wide open, fast racetrack.

Q: Is Modified racing on its last legs with big names jumping into the Late Model ranks?

Johnson: With the Late Models, the guys pay a lot more money than what we were used to racing for, but I don’t see Modified racing being on a downhill. Especially up our way. There’s a lot of racetracks still going strong.

Q: Describe the end of that race at Daytona on Saturday?

Stewart: It’s just crazy. Everybody’s going for it at the end. Donnie Allison and Cale Yarborough crashed in the first TV race, so it’s not something that’s all of a sudden new in our sport. It’s been going on for years on superspeedways like that.

Q: How do you keep the team positive with all hardships this season?

Dave Blaney: All you can do is stay in the car, stay at the racetrack and do all you can do. The first few weeks it was a really hard thing to do. You’ve got to resign yourself that that’s what it is. Hopefully, either an opportunity comes along in one of the other series, or in the Cup series, or my team gathers a little sponsorship along the way and starts building up. It was a hard thing (to decide to drive the No. 66 car for PRISM Motorsports) but at the moment; it was the best option.

Q: Is your team close to being competitive?

Dave: No, we’ve just got a tiny, little team, enough to go out and qualify for the races and that’s it. So you have to get a lot of money, get some sponsorship in there to improve that team, or just go somewhere else.

Q: Has any offers from other series’ come along?

Dave: No. I was hoping to have a good opportunity in the truck series over the winter, to tell you the truth, have some fun and win some races in that, and it didn’t work out. But we’re just putting in our time right now and hoping that something comes along.



Rob Malsom is a sports writer for The Herald