Tony Stewart riding high after win in sprint car return

Tony Stewart will enter the race he always wants to win coming off his first victory in more than a year.

The three-time Sprint Cup champion won a sprint car race last Friday at Tri-City Motor Speedway in Auburn, Mich. It marked his first open-wheel race since breaking his right leg in a sprint car race last August in Iowa.

"It was a great feeling," said Stewart, who finished third in a Saturday night race at Crystal, Mich. "It wasn't so much the win as it was a great feeling to run the whole night."

Stewart had tested a sprint car in late May, and a rainout foiled a plan to race last month. His return to the grass-roots series that sparked his career coincided with an off-week in NASCAR's premier series.

Stewart, who raced more than 90 times in 2012 between NASCAR and sprint cars, owns USAC and World of Outlaws sprint car teams. He plans to race a sprint car again soon and has worked with Stewart-Haas Racing competition director Greg Zipadelli to plot out a feasible schedule.

"I've got some more, not as many as I was originally wanting to run, but just trying to pick some places that we knew might not be quite as high risk as others because of speed," he said during a Monday conference call with news reporters. "So we tried to pick some tracks that we thought might be a little slower. I'm just trying to be smart with the amount of races I'm going to run the rest of the year."

Stewart's car has safety enhancements that include tethers designed to secure the torque tube, which shattered his leg in last year's crash. Stewart is unaffected by the injury behind the wheel but still is hurting outside the cockpit.

"I still deal with pain every day, but that's something that's not even going to probably go away by the end of the year," he said. "The reality of it is there might be a point where it will never totally go away, but it doesn't keep me from doing what I love to do. I don't feel pain in the race car. That's probably around 3% of my week, but as long as that 3% is comfortable and I can enjoy doing what I'm doing, I can deal with the pain the other 97% of the week.

"The scenario could have been so much worse that I don't feel bad about it. I'm pretty comfortable dealing with the pain each day the way it is."

The Columbus, Ind., native should have a spring in his step this week. His Eldora Speedway will host the Camping World Truck Series for the second consecutive season with Wednesday's Mudsummer Classic in Rossburg, Ohio.

Stewart will spend the rest of the week at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the beloved hometown track where has two Brickyard 400 victories. Winless in his No. 14 Chevrolet through the first 19 races, Stewart could use another Indy victory Sunday to shore up a Chase for the Sprint Cup berth.

Stewart, who hasn't won in NASCAR since June 2013 at Dover International Speedway, found some momentum in the sprint car win.

"It was a confidence boost for me," he said. "When you haven't won and haven't been necessarily a contender, you start questioning what is it in the equation that you're missing. Is it something that you're doing or not doing as a driver? To be able to win and have two good runs like that in a car that I haven't been in for almost a full year now, that was a huge confidence boost."