NASCAR Champion Tony Stewart Keeps Winning Even In Off Season

Reigning NASCAR champion Tony Stewart is back racing this weekend.  No, the new NASCAR season has not started early.  Stewart is driving an open-wheeled midget car at an indoors event in Indiana.

The event is known as the Rumble in Fort Wayne.  A 1/6 mile track is set up indoors at the Memorial Coliseum Expo Center and hosts midget, winged midget, mini-sprint, kart and quarter midget racing.  This is the 14th year for the two-day event.

Stewart has won at the Rumble a record seven times, but did not run the event in 2009 and 2010 because he was off racing a sprint car in Austrailia those years. 

The three-time Sprint Cup Series champion made a winning return Friday night as he easily won the opening night 50-lap midget feature.  Including a victory earlier this month in an all-star karting race, Stewart has now won 7 of his past 12 races overall this year - including five of the 10 races in the Chase for the Championship in NASCAR's Sprint Cup series.

Stewart is expected to do some more indoor midget racing prior to the start of the 2012 NASCAR season.  He plans to compete in the 2012 Chili Bowl midget nationals which is an indoor event in Tulsa, Oklahoma beginning on January 10.