Tony Stewart’s no stranger to chaos, but his latest scare at the NHRA Reading Nationals was a wild one. During the second round of Top Fuel eliminations at Maple Grove Raceway, Doug Kalitta’s dragster lost its front left wheel just past the finish line, veering into Stewart’s lane. The collision flipped Stewart’s 11,000-horsepower machine onto its side, slammed it back onto its wheels, and sent it crashing into the left guard wall.

Both drivers walked away, but Stewart was left with a concussion, a sore body, a pounding headache, and a banged-up left hand. He has no memory of the crash, only waking up after, yet he’s already cleared to race again, showing the grit that earned him three NASCAR Cup titles and nearly 50 wins. Recently, Stewart opened up about the incident, brushing off the NHRA crash’s intensity compared to the bone-rattling wrecks he’s faced in NASCAR. His biggest fear? The steep-angle, dead-stop hits that haunt stock car racing, something drag racing’s straight-line chaos mostly avoids.

Stewart compares crashes across worlds

On Happy Hour, Tony Stewart got real about the Reading crash and how it stacks up to his NASCAR days. “I really don’t have a clear answer for that. Knowing what I feel like this week, I mean we’ve crashed hard, I crashed in your car at Charlotte. Did the same thing on Sunday, and the Cup car blowing two tires out felt worse than what I feel this week,” he told Harvick.

Stewart’s no stranger to brutal stock car wrecks, like the 2012 Talladega pileup or tire blowouts in the 2022 Coca-Cola 600 that shook drivers like Chris Buescher. NASCAR’s 3,400-pound Cup cars hit harder than NHRA’s lighter dragsters, and tire failures amplify the jolt. Stewart’s point: the Reading flip, while scary, didn’t match the raw force of some NASCAR hits.

He zoned in on head injuries, “The biggest thing is just the fact that I banged my head a little bit. I think that was probably the bigger concern, that I banged my head and took a real short nap. But physically from that standpoint I don’t feel any different than I would have if we had a crash in a Cup car or if I’d have crashed a sprint car.”

Concussions have haunted Stewart, much like Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s 2016 hiatus or Kurt Busch’s 2022 Pocono crash that sidelined him. The NHRA wreck’s shockwave knocked him out without wall contact, a reminder that drag racing’s explosive forces, powered by 11,000 horsepower, carry their own risks even if they feel familiar to NASCAR’s head-rattlers.

Stewart pinpointed what makes crashes dangerous, “We always talk about the hard part, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re going, it’s about how quick it stops, right? The good thing is our lanes are pretty close together, the walls are close together, so it’s hard to get a lot of angle across the track. It does happen in the shorter wheelbase cars, but not as much here.”

Physics backs him up. Impact angle and sudden stops drive injury risk. NASCAR’s steep-angle crashes, like Michael McDowell’s near-head-on 2008 Texas wreck, spike G-forces. NHRA’s tight lanes limit those 45–90-degree hits, making flips like Stewart’s less catastrophic than stock car pileups.

He wrapped with the key difference, “But when you’re running 300 miles an hour, when something happens, you’re not going to just make an immediate 90-degree turn and have a 300 mph head-on crash. That’s what’s different. The lanes are so close together. In NASCAR, on wide tracks with sweeping corners, if you ran the bottom, by the time you got there, the corner had moved around a lot further, giving you a bigger angle. I think that’s a good thing that we don’t deal with on the NHRA side.”

NASCAR’s big ovals, like Ryan Newman’s brutal 2020 Daytona 500 hit, amplify angle-driven danger. NHRA’s straight shots reduce that risk, even in violent flips like Reading’s, letting Stewart downplay the crash while fearing NASCAR’s sudden stops more.

Meanwhile, Stewart’s crash reflection ties to his next chapter, as he’s not slowing down despite the risks.

Stewart’s will continue racing

On Happy Hour, Stewart confirmed he’ll race Top Fuel in 2026 with Elite Motorsports, not his own Tony Stewart Racing, due to Leah Pruett’s return to TSR’s Dodge//SRT dragster.

“I said from the very beginning that I was just keeping Leah’s seat warm and that it was hers as soon as she was ready to come back,” Stewart said. Pruett, stepping back in 2024 for their son Dominic’s birth, brings her three TSR wins to a 2026 showdown with her husband. Elite’s Richard Freeman added, “Having Tony as our driver, adding another Top Fuel entry, we’re taking care of the sport and opening up possibilities,” with Erica Enders and Aaron Stanfield also licensing in the car.

Stewart’s uneasy about racing Pruett, “I still think it’s a terrible idea… It’s a no-win situation for me. If I win, I get kicked to the couch. If she wins, I get to call all my buddies and tell them I got my a– kicked by my wife.” His 2024 Rookie of the Year and 2025 regular-season title, plus two wins, keep him second in points despite the Reading crash.

Meanwhile, TSR’s sprint car arm signed Rico Abreu for the 2026 High Limit Series, showing Stewart’s still all-in on racing. His Happy Hour chat, downplaying NHRA’s dangers while fearing NASCAR’s abrupt hits, paints a racer who thrives on the edge, concussion and all, as he preps for a family-fueled 2026.