Fri, 29 Oct 2004, 11:07 AM 90% of this Game is Mental, the Other Half is Physical

By Bob Frey Photo copyright 2004 Auto Imagery, Inc.

Larry Stewart

OK, so it wasn’t said by a drag racer, it was said by Yogi Berra, and he wasn’t talking about drag racing, he was talking about baseball. And don’t let the fact that it doesn’t make any sense bother you, after all, it was Yogi Berra and he’s same guy who once said, “Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded.” Still, what the great Yogi had to say and what Larry Stewart Jr. is going through right now have a lot in common. Yogi was in a lot of championship races and so is Larry. Yogi won a lot and Larry would like to.

As you look at the current points in the Super Stock class you see a very familiar name at the top of the list, Dan Fletcher. You see a not so familiar name ten points behind Dan, and that’s Larry Stewart Jr.. Larry is in the midst of his best season ever having already posted national event wins in Houston and St. Louis to go along with two final round appearances at divisional races. Dan’s record, of course, speaks for itself. The two went head-to-head at the recent Division 4 race in Belle Rose, Louisiana, and it was Dan who took the win. “I knew I missed the tree as soon as it happened,” Larry said referring to his not so bad .037 reaction time. But when the guy in the other lane is Dan Fletcher, one of the best in the business, you have to do better. Dan’s “21” light got him off the line first and when Larry ran one hundredth over his dial and Dan ran right on it was over. Still, Larry added a few points to his season’s total which was good, but so did Dan. Now the two of them find themselves in similar positions, they both can win the Lucas Oil World Championship and they both have one divisional race remaining at which they can score points. “I’ll go down to Gainesville this week and try to improve my total,” Larry said. “Then I guess I’ll have to figure out what to do after that. Dan didn’t go to Atco this past week and I don’t know where he plans to go but I can’t worry about that.” Through it all Larry has said that it’s the mental part of the game that is the toughest on him, not the mechanical or the physical. “I put a lot of pressure on myself and that doesn’t help. I need to relax and drive my car.” If he does that, Larry has a great shot a winning the championship.

Larry Stewart was a high school football player in Mississippi and he was very good at that. “I played wide receiver and I also returned punts and kickoffs,” he said. “And I was an all district player in my senior year.” Upon graduation the Clinton High School graduate then had to decide if he wanted to play football at the next level or go drag racing. Since he couldn’t call Yogi for some advice, Larry had to decide for himself, and his choice not to play ball was some college’s loss. “To compete at the college level you have to live football and I really wanted to race. My dad was a racer and I wanted to follow him.” His dad, Larry Sr., owned the car that won the 1986 Winternationals with Smylie Little driving. “I remember getting calls during football practice about how they were doing in California and I was so excited. I knew I wanted to race.” He got his chance when dad let him drive the winning Chevrolet Nova station wagon and then he moved up to his present car. “I started out in a stocker and then dad put me in the wagon. In our first couple of years we traveled all over, I think we hit something like thirteen or fourteen races in our first year.” Still, with all of that family history and all of those races, until two years ago the best that Larry had ever done was a forty-seventh place finish in the national points. Last year, however, on the strength of some fine showings on the divisional level, Larry cracked the top twenty in the national points and he won the very competitive Division 4 Super Stock crown. But none of that prepared him for the rigors of this championship chase.

Going into that D-4 race in Louisiana Larry knew that he would have some tough competition and he knew that a lot of it would come from his fellow division racers. What he really didn’t expect was to see Dan Fletcher, a New York native, on his home turf. “Dan is amazing and I absolutely respect him for what he’s done and I told him so at the race. And I knew that when it came time to race him I would have to be at my best. I wasn’t and he beat me. We tried something with the car that didn’t work and I learned from it.” Still, Larry says that the toughest part of this is the mental pressure that he puts on himself. “This is still a learning process for me while guys like Dan have been doing it so long that they have a much better handle on everything.” Larry said that if he has a six or eight page book on what he’s done and how to set up the car for certain situations, guys like Fletcher have three books full of stuff. “We had a good race but he just knew what to do at the other end of the track and he beat me. I’ll learn from it and move on.”

Larry in Winner's Circle

In order to get better Larry knows that he has to do a couple of things. First, he knows that he has to put his last race behind him. “It took me a couple of days to get over that weekend, but now I’m looking forward to Gainesville,” he said. Second, he knows that he has to practice and he especially has to practice his starting line reflexes. “I’d like to be around ‘15’ or better off the line and that will be good most of the time. Of course when you run someone like Dan, you have to be even better than that, but dad gets nervous if I get in the low teens, he thinks it could lead to a red light.” And, third, he knows that he needs to put things together at both ends of the track. “You better have about a three-hundredths package against the good guys or you’ll lose.” That sounds like a lot to think about for a guy who’s going through the championship chase for the first time. “I like where I am and I also like the fact that three or four of our Division 4 racers could end up in the top ten nationally. This is a good division and when you have to race with Buz Post, Jeff Hefler and guys like that every week, you better be good or you’re going home early.”

Larry’s car is a 1967 Nova that started out it’s racing life as a bracket racer. His dad traded the legendary station wagon for it and then the two of them updated the car to its present form. It uses a 327 cubic inch engine and usually puts Larry right in the middle of the pack, that is, sometimes he’s being chased and sometimes he’s doing the chasing. “When we went from a 283 to a 327 it added about ten miles an hour to out top speed and that’s a lot,” Larry said. “It’s a good car and I feel comfortable driving it. Richard Stevens at Stevens Race Cars did the chassis and he gets a lot of credit for how it runs, and Joe Teuton has worked us with on the dyno and that’s been a big help, too. Plus, I’ve got to say that Alan and Todd Patterson at Patterson Racing Engines have been a major help this year. We couldn’t have done this without their support.” When he isn’t concentrating on his driving Larry runs his business, Ace Drain Service and Plumbing Repair in Clinton, but I have a word for the folks in Larry’s home town, I hope you don’t have any real problems in the next few weeks because Larry could be busy. There’s still a lot of racing left to go and Larry Stewart Jr. is making a serious run at the title, and win, lose or draw, he’s going to give it his best shot because as Yogi Berra always said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”