Tony Stewart goes from driver to ticket seller at Martinsville

Lindsey Henley

Published: March 12, 2008

After voicing his complaints about Goodyear over the weekend, Tony Stewart showed a lighter side selling tickets Wednesday at Martinsville.
“This is easy,” Stewart said.  “This ticket stuff is easy.  Anybody can do this.  Well, almost anybody.”
He’s joking now but still not apologizing for last weekend’s Goodyear rant.
“I don’t want to sit around here for the next 30 weeks of the season and ride around on a tire like I rode around on last Sunday,” he said.
Some of his fans, even the ones who waited in line to meet him, wish he would tone it down
“He just gets all out of control and everything,” fan Kristen Shelton said.  “Just calm it down a little bit and be nice.”
But others say they like the aggression Tony shows off the track.
“I’m retired from the military, so I’m used to being aggressive.  That was one of the biggest things I liked about him coming on the tour,” fan Don Dodson said.
“At the end of the day, when I go home, there’s not a part of me that says, ‘Man I just wish I would have just been honest with somebody and just said what I thought,” Stewart said.  “I am who I am, and that’s where our fan base comes from.”
“He works hard, he tries hard, and he tells it like it is,” fan Sheri Smith said.
Just don’t ask him whether he’s having a “Goodyear.”