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| NASCAR champion. Indy Racing League (IRL) champion. United States Auto Club (USAC) champion. Karting champion. From the beginning of his career 25 years ago to his present role as driver of the #20 Home Depot Chevrolet in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series, Tony Stewart has proven to be a champion every step of the way.
The Columbus, Ind., native has scored a total of nine driving championships since he first wheeled a go-kart at a Westport, Ind., race track in 1978. But it was his NASCAR championship in 2002 that Stewart puts first on his list of accomplishments. Stewart's racing career began at age seven behind the wheel of a go-kart, with his father, Nelson, serving as car owner and crew chief. In 1980 at the age of eight, Stewart had won his first championship - a 4-cycle rookie junior class championship at the Columbus (Ind.) Fairgrounds. Two more karting championships followed, but this time on a national level - the 1983 International Karting Federation Grand National championship and the 1987 World Karting Association National championship.
By 1989, Stewart had begun the transition from go-karts to higher-horsepower, open-wheel machines. He raced Three-Quarter Midgets before turning his attention to the USAC ranks in 1991 where he won Rookie of the Year honors.
Stewart notched his first USAC championship in 1994 by winning five times in 22 starts in the National Midget category. It was a prelude to even bigger things, as 1995 was the year Stewart made USAC history by winning the Triple Crown. He won the National Midget, Sprint and Silver Crown titles all in the same year, a feat never accomplished by anyone before Stewart.
In addition to being devoted to racing, Stewart is also devoted to philanthropy, so much so that he formed his own charitable foundation in 2003. Known simply as the Tony Stewart Foundation, its goal is to raise funds that will be primarily distributed to organizations that help care for critically ill children, as well as to lend support to families of race car drivers who have been injured in motorsports.
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Having first driven competitively at the age of five years old in quarter midgets around his hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas, Labonte wasted little time letting everyone know what a natural he was behind the wheel. While the quarter midget racing continued and expanded over the years, the call to race something faster and bigger came in 1978 as Labonte made the move to go-karts. The move was short lived though as Labonte moved with his parents from Texas to North Carolina in 1979 to help support his older brother Terry's budding NASCAR Winston Cup career. So before it even had a chance to flourish, Labonte's young racing career seemed to be over.
In 1991, Labonte scored his first career Busch Series win at Bristol International Raceway and went on to win the 1991 NASCAR Busch Series points championship. In addition to the title, Labonte managed to make his first career NASCAR Winston Cup Series start in June at Dover Downs in a car he owned. He would go on to start one more Winston Cup race in 1991. As 1992 rolled around, Labonte won three more races on the Busch Series and was edged out for his second straight NASCAR Busch Series title by Joe Nemechek who beat him by a mere three points.
In his first year with Gibbs, Labonte won three races, including his first career Winston Cup victory in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte and also swept both events in Michigan. In addition, he finished 10th in the final point standings. To this day, Labonte continues to say his biggest break in his racing career came when he was fired from Hagan at the conclusion of the 1986 season.
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