Click here to follow us on Twitter @circletrackplus   Click here to like us on Facebook 

The 2011 season was heaven for me. The two Sprint Cup drivers with whom I had the best working relationship dueled it out for 10 weeks in the greatest Chase there ever was and likely will be.

Now, apparently, as these words are written, both are Cup drivers no more. In a minor note, I haven’t been an on-site beat reporter since 2012. I haven’t talked to Tony Stewart, the 2011 champion, since I left. Carl Edwards called me on the phone once.

I was here today, gone tomorrow. The two drivers will be long remembered.

I wrote a book once about Tony. I spent lots of time with Carl’s family. Carl once gave me a ride home on his plane. I took a ride on Tony’s plane once, too. The difference in those trips was sort of similar to the difference in the men.

In 2000, I was writing a book about Tony, Rebel with a Cause: A Season with NASCAR Star Tony Stewart, on the side while plying my trade as a beat reporter. The book was independent. Tony didn’t get anything out of it. Still, he trusted me enough to grant as much access as my other duties would allow. I noticed that, every time I turned around, Tony was buying something.

I was sitting in the lounge of the transporter one day when Tony matter-of-factly informed me that he had purchased a team of greyhounds.

Greyhounds!

I said to him, “You know, Tony, you don’t actually have to buy everything somebody offers you. I grew up on a farm. Would you like me to start looking at a herd of cattle for you?”

This apparently got under his skin. At the end of the season, I was checking into a hotel in South Florida when I got a text message from Tony. It read:

Meet me at Homestead Air Force Base at noon. (It may have been 2:30, or 10 in the morning. I can’t recall.) We flew across the state so that I could watch Tony’s greyhounds run. He wanted to show me he was taking this seriously. I met the dogs’ trainer. I watched the races in a group where everyone else had more money than I. I bet more than I should’ve, and not particularly successfully. When we left to fly back to Homestead, I bet on one more race. On Sunday morning, the trainer told me I had hit that race big. He gave me a wad of bills. I’ve often wondered if I really won. I suspect Tony had noticed how much money I was dropping and intervened in my behalf.

In 2007, I was writing a magazine story on Carl. We were supposed to spend some time at the race in Kansas, but things didn’t work out, and Carl said I could come back with him to Columbia (Missouri, his home), and we could talk on Monday and Tuesday. I told him I had a plane to catch on Monday, and he said I could fly back to North Carolina with him and we could talk on the plane. This wasn’t without complications. Carl’s mother, Nancy, followed me to St. Louis so I could turn in my rental car. Carl was flying to Concord, N.C. My personal car was at Greenville-Spartanburg (S.C.) Airport. I told him I’d rent a car and drive back to get it.

Carl said, “Don’t be silly. I’ll drop you off.”

It was a whistlestop. Carl landed his plane. We taxied to a small terminal. I got off and fetched my bags from the belly of the plane, and Carl rolled back out to the runway and took off. He had arranged for a van to take me to the parking lot.

In both instances, I was grateful and flattered that two prominent drivers thought enough of me to do those kinds of favors.

Tony is reluctant to let the world know just how good a person he is. Carl is mystified by why more haven’t noticed.

I miss each of them more than the sport in which they so excelled.

Now the whole racing public is going to miss them. Racing itself is going to miss them more. They will still be around, but they won’t be wrestling their trusty machines – high, wide and handsome, as public-address announcer Ray Melton used to say at Darlington when I was a youth – and all the other trusty machines won’t be wrestled with quite as much aplomb.