Stewart Speaks Publically For First Time Since Tragic Accident – Transcript August 30, 2014 NASCAR Tony Stewart returned to the NASCAR garage Friday for the first time since the tragic accident on August 9 in which Kevin Ward Jr. died. Stewart took the last two races off and has been secluded since the accident. He spoke to media upon his return to the garage – the complete transcript follows… THE MODERATOR: Good morning. I’m director of communication for Stewart-Haas Racing. Up here is Tony Stewart, driver/owner of Stewart-Haas Racing, and Brett Frood, executive vice president of Stewart-Haas Racing. Tony has prepared some remarks. We’ll let him read those. Tony Stewart (photo – Jamie Squire/Getty Images for NASCAR) TONY STEWART: Thanks. This has been one of the toughest tragedies I’ve ever had to deal with both professionally and personally. This is something that will definitely affect my life forever. This is a sadness and a pain that I hope no one ever has to experience in their life. With that being said, I know that the pain and the mourning that Kevin Ward’s family and friends are experiencing is something that I can’t possibly imagine. I want Kevin’s father, Kevin Sr., and his mother Pam, and his sisters Christi, Kayla, Katelyn, to know that every day I’m thinking about them and praying for them. The racing community is a large family, as you guys know. Everyone’s saddened with this tragedy. I want to thank all my friends and family for their support through this tough emotional time, and the support from the NASCAR community, my partners, all of our employees, it’s been overwhelming. I’ve taken the last couple weeks off out of respect for Kevin and his family, and also to cope with the accident in my own way. It’s given me the time to think about life and how easy it is to take it for granted. I miss my team, my teammates. I miss being back in the racecar. I think being back in the car this week with my racing family will help me get through this difficult time. I also understand that all of you have many questions and want a lot of answers, however I need to respect the ongoing investigation process and cannot answer and address the questions at this time. Emotionally I’m not sure if I could answer them anyway. We’re here to race this weekend, and I appreciate your respect. There will be a day when I can sit here and answer the questions. Thank you. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Tony. Again, Brett Frood, executive vice president of Stewart-Haas Racing, will be available to take a handful of questions. Q. Brett, NASCAR issued a statement yesterday that Tony had received all necessary clearances to race. What was the process of going through clearances? What approvals did he need? BRETT FROOD: Well, as you all know, when a driver’s out of the car, there is that process. I’m not going to get into the medical side of it, but I will say we’ve been in close contact with them throughout the process, have gotten from them what he needed to get back in the car right now. Q. The investigation as we understand is still open. Was there any thought to not having Tony race until it was closed? Why now? BRETT FROOD: Well, I think for Tony, it’s all about this healing process. That’s part of why he’s in the car. Besides his mom, his dad, his sister, his niece and nephew, his family is here, it’s at this racetrack. It’s part of the healing process of being with his family that he’s been with since 1999, knowing that these people are going to help him get through this. I think that’s one side of it. The other side of it is he’s a racer. We have 270 employees. I think him putting a helmet on will help him cope with this situation. Q. Brett, respecting the process, the investigation, knowing there’s things you can’t comment on, are you able to say whether you know whether Tony has a clear picture in his own mind of what happened that second or two that night? BRETT FROOD: I am not going to comment on the incident itself. It was a tragic accident. Right now the focus is to be on Tony and the car this weekend and how he’s going to get through this. Q. The fact that Tony is racing this weekend, should we read anything into that about what you know about the investigation and where it’s at in the process? BRETT FROOD: No. I mean, we’ve really been respecting the process, as Tony said, and the investigation. Him being in the racecar right now is about him getting through what has been a very emotional two weeks, what his next step is in coping with this. There’s been a great deal of empathy and sympathy for that family and what they’re going through. For Tony, it’s just been extremely emotional. This is what is going to help him. Q. Can you talk about where Tony is at emotionally right now to step into the car? Was it 100% his choice not to race the last couple of weeks, without the involvement of the sanctioning body that we will hear from next? BRETT FROOD: I’ll address the latter first. Yes, the decision to be in the car is 100% Tony’s. Q. Please define his emotional stage at this point. A very fragile Tony Stewart at this point. BRETT FROOD: You just saw Tony. It’s been a difficult two weeks. But Tony is ready to be in the racecar. He wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t. Q. Brett, you’ve worked for Tony for a long time. You’ve seen him in ways we have not. How would you characterize his preparation for this and what you think he’ll experience as he gets back in the car? BRETT FROOD: I think it’s going to be very overwhelming being in that garage today. He’s going to feel an awful lot of support. As I just mentioned, this is his family. It’s the crew members, it’s the officials, it’s the drivers. It’s his family that he’s been with since 1999. This is going to be part of that process for him. I believe it’s going to be an overwhelming process, this weekend. That being said, Tony Stewart is a racecar driver. He’s been a racecar driver for the past 35 years. When he puts that helmet on in practice, I’m quite convinced he’ll be ready to race the car, he’ll be able to separate the two. Q. Brett, this obviously is a tremendous tragedy. Obviously in the sport of racing, these guys learn to deal with that part of the sport. Why do you think this has hit Tony so hard? BRETT FROOD: Because he was involved in an accident and a young man died. I can’t imagine what he’s going through. I can’t imagine what the kid’s parents are going through. It’s something, as Tony said, that he hopes no one in this room or certainly anywhere will ever have to go through. He was involved in a tragic accident. Q. I noticed Tony mentioned Kevin Ward’s family members by name. Has he reached out to them personally at all? BRETT FROOD: Tony has sent the family flowers and a card around the services. Besides that he’s been very respectful of them and their time to grieve. I do know that it will be very important, it’s important for Tony, to spend time with the family. I do believe that will happen in the appropriate time. Q. Obviously it’s an emotional time. Internally how do you deal with it as an organization, the prep work? Let’s face it, it’s not an ordinary weekend that all of you are dealing with. BRETT FROOD: We’ve got 270 employees back in Kannapolis working hard. Tony has three other team members. These are folks that are at Stewart-Haas because they believe in the leadership, they believe in the ownership, believe in the folks that we have surrounding them, and we believe in them. So for them, I think their focus has been undeterred over the last several weeks. They’re obviously really excited to have Tony back in the car, that leader, the guy they believe in. So I think the focus will be there this weekend from those guys. We should be good. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much for your time. We certainly appreciate it. Following the Stewart-Haas Racing press conference NASCAR held one of their in which they announced Stewart would be eligible for the Chase if he wins one of the next two races – NASCAR President Mike Helton made the announcement – the transcript follows… THE MODERATOR: Welcome to NASCAR weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway. As you know, Tony Stewart will be returning to NASCAR competition today, will be participating in fact in practice starting within the half hour at 2:30 and then will participate in qualifying later this evening. For this reason we’ve asked our president, Mike Helton, to address the media today. MIKE HELTON: Thank you. I refer back to Steve O’Donnell’s release yesterday or statement on behalf of NASCAR that, as you know very clearly by now, we have cleared Tony to return as part of the normal process when a driver has been absent from participating. It also mentioned in that release that we’ve been in close contact for the past several weeks with Stewart-Haas Racing monitoring and participating in conversations. As you can imagine, once Tony was cleared to return and he decided to come back, the question goes to his possible eligibility in the Chase. Before I get into that, I do want to join everybody else in the garage area in welcoming Tony back. He’s been a great asset to NASCAR. He’s been a great champion, a great participant in our sport, so it’s nice to have him back. Back to the Chase part for just a second. I’ll remind everybody back earlier this year when we announced the format for the ’14 Chase, that announcement included some responsibility about the routine participation in the season in order to be eligible in the Chase. Along with that importance of routine participation also came the asterisk, so to speak, about except in rare instances. This has been a very unique set of circumstances to Tony and to our sport. As the league, it’s our responsibility to try to make decisions that are correct and right. Sometimes we evaluate circumstances that are given us and then make those decisions as correctly as we can. After evaluating the circumstances around this occurrence, we’ve come to the conclusion that Tony would be eligible to participate in the Chase if he were to earn a spot in it. So with that we can open up the floor for a few questions. THE MODERATOR: We’ll go to questions. Q. Mike, yesterday in the release Steve O’Donnell said specifically there were multiple clearances that Tony had to receive. What was the nature of those? MIKE HELTON: As typical, our process calls for us to rely on third party experts to assure us that a NASCAR driver or a NASCAR member is ready to return. All those forms of processes were met and we cleared him based on those third party inputs from experts. Q. Mike, as you know, when this incident first took place, there was a lot of confusion in the mainstream media over the incident, whether it involved NASCAR, you as the sanctioning body. There’s a misconception that NASCAR sanctions a lot of things that it actually doesn’t. A lot of people spent a lot of time trying to clear up that misconception. By granting a waiver to Tony Stewart for something that originated by competing in another series, are you worried at all that that line may blur again between competition of what you’re in control of and what someone elects to do on their own time? MIKE HELTON: I don’t think so. I think our scope of responsibility is to our membership, our events. Sometimes incidents occur outside of the sanctioned event, a NASCAR sanctioned event, that we have to consider in the participation of members. So I don’t think so. Q. Tony Stewart was just in here and read a statement. Is obviously still stricken with grief. How has NASCAR determined he’s ready to get back in the car? Has anybody from the organization talked with him to make sure he is mentally ready or capable to be behind the wheel? MIKE HELTON: Throughout this period of time, as Steve mentioned in his statement yesterday, NASCAR has been in constant contact with Stewart-Haas Racing. But when it comes to the assurances that a driver or a NASCAR member is ready to return, we’re going to rely on outside experts. Q. Mike, when you talk about outside experts, to clarify, in your process of evaluation, did you get psychological or psychiatric reports as part of your evaluation of Tony’s eligibility to return? MIKE HELTON: We received the ones that we felt were relevant under the circumstances. Q. These were from psychological professionals? How can we categorize those? MIKE HELTON: The ones that were relevant to these circumstances. Q. The fact that the investigation into the tragedy is still ongoing, did you weigh that at all in your decision? If for some reason Tony does actually face charges in this, would he be subject to any discipline? MIKE HELTON: We made our decisions based on the circumstances we’ve got currently. And I think most everyone in this room understands at NASCAR, our effort, our scope of responsibility and authority is limited to the NASCAR community. We take the current circumstances that we are dealt with and make what we hope to be the best absolute conclusion. That’s what we’re talking about today, is the current set of circumstances and our reaction to them. Q. Mike, can you describe as much as possible how the actual process worked to get to this point where you’re able to make this announcement today. MIKE HELTON: Well, I think we have experience. You’re well aware of our policies and procedures on reinstatement when someone is absent, for whatever reason it may be. So these would apply to similar situations, except for the fact that this was very unique. The reinstatement process doesn’t begin until the competitor is ready to come back. That’s what we’ve been through this week. Q. Given these unique circumstances, has there been thought to adding a 17th position to the Chase? Have you had any car owners suggest that? MIKE HELTON: We haven’t had anyone suggest it, and that’s not on the table right now. It’s simply if Tony were able to earn a spot in the Chase, and our decision is currently yes. Q. Mike, you said you went through the whole process, the third party individuals with whom you spoke made it clear Tony could be reinstated. How hard was the decision? Was the evidence or information overwhelmingly easy or not? MIKE HELTON: I don’t know if we could categorize the ease of it. This was a very challenging, a very unique situation. I think the earlier press conference with Tony’s statement that he read was evidence of how overwhelming these set of circumstances have been. I think particularly those of us that follow this sport every weekend know that driver’s healing processes are unique, but they are racecar drivers, and a lot of times getting back in a racecar is something they shoot to do as quickly as they can. So once Tony decided to come back, we then had to go through the policies and the procedures and the steps that we’ve historically built over time to make the absolute most correct decision we could make under the circumstances we were handed. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, everybody. Appreciate your time.
