Tony Stewart hasn't competed in NASCAR since 2018, and he hasn't raced in the NASCAR Truck Series in almost twenty years, so there was a lot of hype around him on Friday night as he returned to drive a Ram Truck.
Unfortunately, we didn't get to see much of Smoke, as he ran towards the back of the pack through the first two stages while the Kaulig Racing team worked on the handling of his truck.
Near the end of Stage 2, Stewart was still running at the back of the lead pack, and was three-wide on the outside. Unfortunately, Jake Garcia got loose and snapped up the track, colliding with Stewart and putting both drivers into the outside wall.
"Man, I can't even drive it," radioed Stewart, who went on to say that he nearly spun out while running under caution.
"If you can't drive it, we'll take it to the garage," the team replied.
The No. 25 Ram 1500 was too damaged and since they weren't racing for points, the decision was made to retire the truck from the race, ending Stewart's NASCAR return before the race even reached the halfway point.
Stewart reflects on his night
The NASCAR Hall of Famer was then checked and released from the infield care center, saying 'never say never' about possibly doing another Truck race in the future, but nothing is in the works right now.
He also struggled with the balance, but felt the team was making significant headway with their adjustments right before the crash, telling Fox Sports 1: "It was starting to get fun, where we can at least get up there and mix it up a little bit, and get in the middle of that stuff. Not sure what happened underneath us, coming across our nose, but that's just part of it."
Speaking to the media scrum waiting for him outside the care center, he said: "Well, the hard thing, it's (the) first race for Kaulig with a truck. So I haven't ran this package. I don't know really what it's supposed to feel like, but I never felt like early in the race that the right rear was really underneath it. I felt like a couple times it never really stepped out, but it just got really free to where you could feel the steering wheel get light and you know, that's when the car's getting free. The first time we had a shot to come make a pit stop and make an adjustment, it didn't really seem like it moved the needle at all. So next time we came down, Alex (Yontz, crew chief) went a different route and it definitely responded to it. I definitely liked it.
"We probably needed that much of an adjustment again, if not a little more, but at least at the time, I could kind of tug on the wheel a little more and feel like I had more control of my truck and felt like I could get up in the mix without feeling too worried about it. I knew we needed to make another adjustment so I wasn't trying to get carried away and get crazy, but, uh, you know, felt comfortable being, you know, green wide on the top there, didn't feel like we were putting ourselves in jeopardy. I'm not really sure what happened that got us there, but we just ended up on the wrong end of that stick.
As for what surprised him behind the wheel in the 40 or so laps he did get to run on Friday night, Stewart was happy he got to do some traditional circuit racing again.
"I don't get a chance to mix it up wheel-to-wheel with anybody anymore on the drag racing side, you don't want to be around anybody running 300mph," said Stewart. "But, you know, it was fun to come back here. It was fun to watch the style these kids run. The guys that -- that their trucks felt good right out of the gate, they were aggressive and it's like, 'man, I wish I had the confidence to do that,' but it was getting more fun when the balance was getting closer to where we needed it to be. And it felt like I was starting to get to where I knew it wasn't gonna be comfortable for me to do the middle of the three wide deal. I wasn't comfortable enough with that, and we weren't tight enough to do that. But the swings we were making, it was getting the balance a lot closer to where we could do that.
Tony Stewart on his premature end to his Truck Series starts at Daytona pic.twitter.com/8nSvMBrz5r
— Matt Weaver (@MattWeaverRA) February 14, 2026
Next week at Atlanta, Ty Dillon will take Stewart's place as the driver of the No. 25 free-agent truck, which will have a rotating roster of drivers throughout the season.
Another fan favorite, YouTuber Cleetus McFarland, wrecked just six laps into the Truck race. He was making his NASCAR Truck Series debut. Stewart will finish 36th, and McFarland will be 37th in the final order.
