Tony Stewart Hit With Lawsuit Over Kevin Ward, Jr. Racing Death

Stewart, 44, is a co-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing with businessman Gene Haas.

Stewart struck Ward with his auto after the young driver walked out onto the track to confront him after a wreck at Canandaigua Motorsports Park in upstate New York in a sprint vehicle race on August 9, 2014.

“People continue to support us and I’m sure they will forever”, Kevin Ward Sr. said on a video posted by NNYRacingConnection on YouTube the night of a memorial race for his son in June.

The lawsuit says Ward suffered “blunt-force trauma to the chest resulting in a transcended aorta, a transected vertical spinal cord, crushed ribs and a hemothorax”. The lawsuit comes one year after Ward was killed. Still, on top of his current challenges with the cars and the regular distractions involved during a race weekend, Stewart will have to deal with the additional media attention brought on by the Ward’s civil action.

Stewart claims the contact was accidental; the Wards maintain it was intentional and avoidable given Stewart’s skill-set.

“Our son was truly the light of our lives and we miss him terribly every day”, the Wards said in a statement.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified financial damages. When they went to double-file restarts and the more equalized cars, all of a sudden these races just became bumper cars, flying through the dirt and knocking one another out of the way and tempers flaring. “One of the things that makes it so special is that me and my family vacation in New York and so it’s very close”. I’ve been around it all my life but what I’ve seen in the last nine months in the racing family is beyond belief.

But Watkins Glen is a specialty race and Stewart has won five previous times on the road course. Ontario County District Attorney Michael Tantillo also said Ward was under the influence of marijuana “enough to impair judgment”.

Stewart is scheduled to race at Watkins Glenn worldwide this weekend. Both SHR and NASCAR declined comment on the lawsuit Friday.

He has yet to find himself in victory lane this year, and while he hasn’t won at Watkins Glen in over 14 years he does have a successful history with the track, winning four out of five races at the Glen from 1997-2001.

At a press conference in Kannapolis, North Carolina last September Stewart he said it was “an accident” and he had offered to speak to the family. “I don’t know if you can even call (the road-course specialists) ringers anymore”. “I don’t know how anyone could be back to the exactly way they were, but not being back to the way I was doesnt mean I can’t be better in some ways”.

As he ran out of gas on the final lap Sunday at Pocono Raceway, Tony Stewart wearily asked his team where he finished.