5 Things We Can Expect from Tony Stewart in the 2015 NASCAR Season

Tony Stewart has been one of NASCAR’s most successful drivers over the course of his career, but his 2014 season, at least behind the wheel, was an absolute disaster.

The 43-year-old three-time Sprint Cup champion failed to win a race for the first time since moving up from the Busch Series in 1999. He wasn’t right physically, continuing to suffer complications from a 2013 wreck that broke his right leg, or mentally, dealing with the aftermath of a tragic accident that claimed Kevin Ward Jr.’s life.

Stewart missed three races after the incident and failed to qualify for the Chase for a second consecutive season. The lone bright spot came when Kevin Harvick, who drives for Stewart as a part of Stewart-Haas Racing, raced to victory at Homestead to claim the Sprint Cup championship.

That’s a lot of heavy lifting for the driver of the No. 14 car.

So, what can we expect of him in the upcoming season?

Here are five things. 

The Start of a New Streak

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Stewart climbed into his car at Homestead-Miami Speedway with one race meaning the difference between extending or ending one of NASCAR’s most impressive runs. A full 15 seasons had passed since Stewart jumped from the Busch Series to the Sprint Cup Series, and he had visited Victory Lane in every single one of them.

But No. 16 proved elusive.

Stewart finished last at Homestead, putting the perfect stamp on a lost season and ending his pursuit of Richard Petty’s NASCAR record 18 consecutive seasons with at least one win. It was an inglorious end to the pursuit of such a hallowed mark, but it should be just a temporary condition.

There’s zero chance that Stewart will come close to that record again, but that doesn’t mean he can’t snag a checkered flag in the season ahead.

And he will. Mark it down.

Stewart has nine race tracks where he’s won three or more times, only failing to record a win at Kentucky and Darlington during his career.

He’s usually in the hunt at Chicagoland, Richmond and Atlanta, among others, and his five wins at Watkins Glen, which he missed this season, as it came just a day after the death of Ward Jr., should make him one of the favorites this coming August.

A Berth in the Chase

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Does anyone else feel like the Chase just isn’t the Chase without Stewart?

The three-time Sprint Cup champion, most recently in 2011, has missed the Chase in back-to-back seasons for the first time in his career. He’s failed to qualify for NASCAR’s equivalent of the playoffs just three times in 16 seasons, with the other time coming in 2006.

NASCAR revamped its Chase format heading into the 2014 season, expanding the field to include 16 drivers—up from 12—and adding elimination stages to create drama.

Stewart was long out of the running before the championship race at Homestead, but all it would’ve taken was one win to sneak into this year’s field.

Whether that will hold true in the upcoming season remains to be seen, but since we expect Stewart to win at least one race—let’s say Watkins Glen with all its accompanying emotion—that should be enough to break his recent string of disappointing Chase-less finishes.

You’d be stone-cold crazy to prognosticate that Stewart will be a contender in 2015, but once you make the Chase, which he will, all bets are off.

Leg Troubles Will Persist

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Love him or hate him, Stewart genuinely loves racing.

He competes in all of NASCAR’s top-level series, but you’ll also find him racing in many of the sport’s smaller, more intimate tracks in events that don’t usually attract drivers of his stature—or even sanction by NASCAR.

In August 2013, nearly a year before the tragic events of this summer, Stewart badly injured his right leg in a multicar crash in a non-NASCAR-sanctioned sprint car race at the Southern Iowa Speedway. His leg was broken in multiple places by the force of the crash, and he's had four of five planned surgeries aimed at getting him right after such a severe injury.

He told Curt Cavin of USA Today after the fourth surgery in early December: "I'm looking forward to the day my leg doesn't hurt anymore. I think that's coming sooner rather than later."

As do we, Tony.

The leg injury seemed to hamper Stewart throughout his entire 2014 campaign, and he acknowledges that his doctors didn’t see healing occur at the pace they had hoped.

Driving a full-time schedule in the Sprint Cup Series is a taxing business, particularly for someone getting up in age—at least when it comes to racing—and with such severe injuries to overcome. Stewart, who, per Cavin, will soon have the fifth and, he hopes, final surgery on the leg, should expect the effects to linger into the coming year.

So much of driving Sprint Cup cars is being comfortable in your ride. And it’s pretty hard to find that comfort level after such a severe injury.

Putting Tragedy in the Rearview Mirror

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A haunted man.

Any story you read about Stewart post-tragedy probably contained those words, because they captured the essence of what he’d become.

Stewart has always been known as a passionate, fiery, sometimes temperamental guy, but all of that was gone after Ward Jr.’s tragic death in upstate New York. It was replaced by numbness, a heavy heart and a pervasive feeling of grief.

Stewart faced possible criminal charges from the incident, and his sponsors reportedly weighed whether to continue supporting him.

He was ultimately cleared by a grand jury of any wrongdoing in the case, and his sponsors stayed put, but the weight of a life lost is not something that will disappear overnight.

There’s little need to rehash the circumstances or timeline of events—it’s been done a thousand times—but closure takes some time.

Stewart took three races off after Ward Jr.’s death, and the tremendous outpouring of support, even from many fans and drivers who had spent lifetimes booing and competing against him, must have provided some level of comfort.

A new year provides the opportunity for a fresh start. Stewart badly needs that, and he’ll get it by leaving the past, as much as possible, in the past.

The Slow Transition from Driver to Pure Owner

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Stewart the owner had a better season than Stewart the driver.

Harvick, in his first season racing for SHR, captured the season-ending race at Homestead and lifted the Sprint Cup trophy for the first time in his career.

During the post-race celebration, Harvick and Stewart exchanged a hug that captured so much of the emotion from two men who had seen their seasons go in opposite directions. It was euphoria from Harvick and relief from Stewart.

And it raised an obvious question: How much longer will Stewart race a full-time schedule before making the transition to being just an owner?

Well, he’ll need to be even more hands-on in the season ahead.

Stewart’s partner, Gene Haas, is focusing most of his energy on getting his Formula One team off the ground, and that should leave some extra work for the driver of the No. 14 car when it comes to the Sprint Cup season.

You shouldn’t expect Stewart to cede his ride just yet, but he will be focusing more on developing and sustaining his team.

Harvick is coming off his first title, so you know he's just fine. Danica Patrick is entering the crucial third season of her Sprint Cup career. And Kurt Busch, SHR’s big-ticket item a season ago, needs to find some more consistency to justify that investment.

Stewart will still race a full schedule in 2015, but you can also expect his mind to focus more on the task of building his organization for when he’s done racing.