Three of the greatest racers around today all had announcements in the last 24 hours. On Wednesday, it was unveiled that Don Schumacher Racing had signed Tony Schumacher for a full time return in 2022. Schumacher, is the winningest driver in Top Fuel history and a legend at Indy which is a place that can make ones career.

“Sarge” will have new support from the Maynard Family and Todd Okuhara. These are the ones who are currently supporting Leah Pruett’s current Top Fuel team. See a connection to Thursday’s announcement now?

Pruett, is a hell of a racer in her own and her fiancé, you may have heard of him, Tony Stewart, is starting an NHRA team now and will have Pruett be his Top Fuel driver. This is all connected in a sense that Stewart and Schumacher know of each other from over a decade ago. Tony Schumacher, had always long had US Army’s backing on his Top Fuel dragster. Stewart, has US Army’s backing on his NASCAR Cup Series team. The connection led Stewart to Tony and Don Schumacher together and got “Smoke” interested in NHRA.

But, it took until he and Pruett got together for the Indiana native’s curiosity of the series to grow. Once he got into more indepth conversations and how much preparation goes into making a pass on the drag strip, he was hooked.

Now, Stewart has a team and he’ll do so in Top Fuel and Funny Car.

He has Pruett, 33, to lead the Top Fuel team and Matt Hagan who’s only 38 on the Funny Car side. Hagan, has won the Funny Car championship three times including just last year. He was leading the points standings heading into last month’s U.S. Nationals at that and is still in control of the points with three races left of the 2021 season. He’s won 39 races during his career.

It further goes to show how much Stewart values people and doing things right. He’s hired two of the best drivers to start this new organization from the ground up and they’ll certainly rise to the level Stewart is accustomed to in no time.

Stewart has 27 owner championships as a part of Tony Stewart Racing. He owns a sprint car team with Donny Schatz, a 10-time campion driving it. Both that team and the NHRA team will reside on the west side of Indianapolis in Brownsburg. He also owns a Cup team based in North Carolina and as well as owning a track at Eldora which is in Ohio and a series too at that in SRX.

He’s a NASCAR Hall of Famer after multiple series championships, he’s won an INDYCAR title and every step of the way through USAC. One could say he’s among the best pure racers ever. Now, you can make a case that he’s as diverse and successful off the track too.