Where There's Smoke...

The only thing Stewart enjoys more than a race car and a fight, it seems, is women. Over the course of a race weekend, he's approached by dozens of them, each more long-legged, doe-eyed and blond than the last. Inside the NASCAR bubble, these gals are called "pit lizards," and they prowl the inner sanctum at tracks throughout the year.

"My parents are afraid my dick's gonna rot off," Stewart says.

Roquemore, the Home Depot girl, was a fixture for a season, until Stewart realized she wasn't the one. "Oh, we had to fire her," he says.

At a late-night fuel stop during the flight to the Phoenix race, he meets two girls, who look to be in their early 20s, working the front desk at the airport lounge in Salina, Kansas.

"Take us with you, Tony?" one of them says as he grabs a chocolate-chip cookie from a tray on the counter.

"Depends," he says, taking a bite. "You gals 18 yet?"

"Why you want to know that?" one girl asks.

"Well, we ain't just flying up there, darling," he says, winking at me. "We'll be taking pictures and hanging out and all sorts of stuff."

"Aww, Tony," singsong the girls.

Talladega superspeedway. The Wimbledon of American motor sports. Set plum in the center of the lower heartland, near Atlanta. Twice a year, the reddest necks in the South travel from the swamps, bayous and cypress groves of Alabama, south Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana and congregate like ill-behaved pilgrims to worship in Talladega's temple of steel, gas, beer and high speed.

They arrive weeks before the race and build shantytowns of dually pickup trucks, beat-up Winnebagos, tarps, tents and gleaming motor coaches affixed with satellite dishes and Weber grills. It's a full-scale bacchanal that one No. 20 crew member described as "a little heartland, a little misbehaving and a little Book of Revelations."

The night before the Talladega race, Stewart is driving through the traffic outside the superspeedway behind the wheel of a beige Camry, in search of the exit. Jody Doles, a former Alabama sheriff, is racing one of Stewart's dirt-track cars at a nearby backwater track. Stewart hired Doles, whom he calls "Redneck Jody," as his property manager in Indiana after an injury forced Doles into retirement, and built him and his wife a house. Doles is a real Southern boy and the center of Stewart's circle of protective confidantes. Smoke ribs him mercilessly.

As he makes his way to the dirt track, Stewart's eyes flicker with annoyance in the rearview mirror at the car behind us.

"What in the hell does this guy have his brights on for?" he says to Tom Wetherald, another Columbus confidante sitting in the passenger seat.

Suddenly, Stewart brakes in the middle of the road, gets out of the Camry and walks to the car behind us. Traffic honks. The driver rolls down his window, ready for a fight.

"Is there a reason you have your high beams on?" Stewart asks, in his best sheriff's voice.

The passengers are briefly stunned. Finally: "Tony! Tony!" they say, recovering. "Hey, man, sorry. Tony, can I get an autograph?"