Where There's Smoke...

Tony Stewart is pissed. It's a crisp night at the Phoenix International Raceway, and Stewart's No. 20 Home Depot Toyota — "Rides like a soapy dishrag!" Stewart complained to me the night before — just finished a distant 14th. Even worse, Jimmie Johnson won the race. Jimmie fucking Johnson: the glad-handing, charity-golf-event-hosting, Eddie Haskell-acting, California-born suck-up.

"I like Jimmie," Stewart says later. "Good guy. He stays in resorts and stuff like that on race weekend. Wish I could afford that kind of lifestyle." Stewart earned an estimated $19 million last year.

Now, furious at the loss, he exits his car and strides angrily across the pit lane and through the garages. His Home Depot fire suit is half undone, the sleeves tied beneath his stately gut. His face is sweaty and smudged, his wet eyes wide and bloodshot from exertion and the heat and fumes of the cockpit. As he seethes, a cloud of greasy black smoke from Johnson's celebratory rubber burn wafts over the Phoenix infield. Mike Arning, Stewart's PR rep, fixer and constant aide-de-camp, walks briskly beside his client, hoping to get Stewart out of town without a TV camera catching him saying something he'll regret. Arning is not always successful.

"Tony will at times do or say things that make our skin crawl," says Jim Hunter, a NASCAR vice president who has been with the sport for 40 years. "He's been an asshole at times."

Stewart barges into the mobile office at the back of the Home Depot hauler where Greg Zipadelli, the only NASCAR crew chief he's ever had, is waiting to debrief him. Stewart slams a door. He throws shit against the wall. He curses. He swigs a Coke Zero.