"Smoke" Nickname
Tony Stewart told NASCAR.com of his nickname: "I wasn't very good about not slipping the right-rear tire, initially. So it started as 'Smoker,' then it got shortened to 'Smoke.' Then when I got in the Indy Racing League it was 'Smoke' because one of the guys on the crew who was my roommate, and knew the nickname, carried it over to the IndyCar team. But then when I started blowing engines, 'Smoke' really stuck. I've had it ever since."
During his NASCAR career, Tony Stewart once was told by No. 20 team owner Joe Gibbs that he could no longer compete in races outside of his Sprint Cup obligations. Stewart worked around this by entering a USAC National Midget race under the pseudonym "Smoke Johnson" with the crowd at the track none the wiser. After winning the feature, "Smoke Johnson" got out of his car and revealed himself to the crowd under his real name. He also once entered himself in a race, driving the infamous "Munchkin" midget chassis, as "Mikey Fedorcak Jr." after buying the Munchkin from Mike Fedorcak during a card game. In 2010 he raced several Modified races under the name Smoke Johnson.
Read more about this topic: Tony Stewart
Famous quotes containing the words smoke and/or nickname:
“I don’t want to smoke cigars or go to stag parties, wear jockey shorts or pick up the check.”
—Shelley Winters (b. 1922)
“A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)