Stewart Bumps & Runs to Indoor Midget Win

Tony Stewart may be just getting his feet wet with that little business venture he's starting for the 2009 Sprint Cup Series, but that certainly doesn't mean he's giving up on one of his true loves:

Open-wheel midget racing in the Mid-West.

So, for another year, Stewart showed up at Fort Wayne's (Indiana) Memorial Coliseum last Friday and Saturday to take part in the "Rumble in Fort Wayne" -- an indoor midget race on a 1/6-mile track set up on the floor of the convention hall. (That's Stewart on the left)

Reports from the local paper indicate that Stewart's winning percentage for the two-night event was 50 percent after he bumped the leader out of the way in the Friday night version to take the checkered flag. Stewart apologized immediately after the race for the contact, saying it wasn't intentional and that "it was my fault."

The driver he bumped, Lou Cicconi Jr., understood Stewart and followed it up by winning the feature race the next night and beating Stewart by a third of a lap, or roughly the length of a football field.

In a telltale sign of how different NASCAR and other top levels of racing are from their short-track roots, Cicconi Jr., announced earlier in the week that he was selling a race he bought to beat Stewart with simply because the officials were "busting [his] chops" about the measurements, and that he'd be leaving the racing series. You can find that chassis for sale on a messageboard.

Think you'd ever see Rick Hendrick or Jack Roush make a call like that? Doubt it.

Stewart's return to Fort Wayne -- one year he showed up unannounced, raced under an alias, won and then shocked the crowd when he took off his helmet -- is the lone race he'll be competeing in during the NASCAR off-season.

Previous obligations -- possibly getting two Sprint Cup teams ready to race in February? -- will keep him from racing in the Chili Bowl in Oklahoma, though he'll attend the event.