Within nine days in mid-September, four major NHRA announcements gushed from the Tony Stewart Racing and Elite Motorsports camps:

• New mother Leah Pruett said she’ll return to her Top Fuel dragster, reclaiming it from avowed temporary place-holder husband Tony Stewart (September 9th)
• Elite Motorsports has purchased the Top Fuel equipment of Josh Hart (September 10th)
• Tony Stewart Racing and Elite Motorsports have forged an alliance (September 11th)
• If and when funding becomes available for Elite’s new dragster, Stewart will drive it (September 18th)

With that, national media (outlets that traditionally don’t attend Mission Foods Drag Racing Series races) trumpeted that “Tony Stewart to race against his wife.” When sponsorship becomes available for Elite/Stewart, it’s not a given that Stewart and Pruett will meet in eliminations all that much. And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time in the sport that a husband and wife square off against one another on the dragstrip.

John “Bodie” Smith and wife Rhonda Hartman-Smith were the first NHRA husband-wife tandem to race each other in 2002. (She stepped away twice in her career, to add daughter Megan and son Dylan to their family.) In that 2002 season, they split four head-to-head matches, and early in the season, they met at three consecutive races.

Matt Smith and Angie Smith, the Pro Stock Motorcycle couple, have competed against one another 28 times since they married in 2009. This year alone, she lost to him at Gainesville but defeated him at Richmond to make their all-time totals 21-7 in favor of team boss Matt.

“He still shows me things where we can improve. It used to be a really long list of things, but I’ve narrowed it way down. He’s still my coach and my mentor, he just doesn’t have to tell me as many things now,” Angie Smith remarked to NHRA.com three years ago.

That’s likely the pattern that will develop with Stewart and Pruett, except she has been the mentor and he the quick-learning student.

Angie Smith also said, “It’s a constant battle, because we have that drive inside of us to be competitors, no matter who’s in the other lane. We both want to be number one, so there’s always trash-talking and a bet on reaction time or E.T. if we have to run each other in qualifying. But we race each other fair and square. There are times I get frustrated with him and he gets frustrated with me, but at the end of the day, this is what we love, and we’re thankful to be able to do it together. Of course, you want to win the championship for yourself – every driver out there is selfish in that way. But this is truly a team effort. If any one of us can win it, it’s a win-win.”

Matt took it a bit further, saying, “We want to be the best team out here. These guys and girls are going to have to go through us to get the championship, and we’ll put up a dogfight. They got to go through me and Angie.”

That likely will be the case – including or excluding the trash-talking – with the sport’s newest power pair, starting in 2026.

No word has come yet about a sponsor stepping forward for the Elite-owned dragster that Stewart would drive starting in 2026. Despite conceding what everyone knew – “I’m a spectator for a little while, and then I get the itch and want to be behind the wheel of something” – Stewart said he would be content to watch Pruett slip back into her groove.

“Even if it all falls through and I don’t end up with a ride for next year, I’m excited to see Leah back in the car. We started TSR Nitro because of Leah, and I can’t wait to see her do what she loves to do… and that’s drive a Top Fuel dragster.”

NHRA drag racing would be in trouble (and it isn’t on the precipice of collapse) if Stewart couldn’t attract a sponsor. So, it’s likely they will compete against each other someday. But a mutual appreciation on a variety of levels has prepared them to interpret that experience – dare anyone say have fun with it? – in their unique way. She has been genuinely excited, not at all jealous, of his incremental success in the dragster. And he has valued, even marveled at, her ability to tutor him in the car, go through childbirth, take on all the maternal duties of motherhood with son Dom, who’ll be a year old in November – all while pumping breast milk and packing parachutes in a seamless flurry.

Stewart said, “She has busted her butt with this program for the last two years, doing special projects and trying to do things to make the team better. And she’s coordinated and worked with both teams [including that of Matt Hagan’s Funny Car] on that side. So, she’s been very valuable to the organization, and has been very active. She’s not just sitting around being a mom for the last two years. When she goes to the racetrack on the weekends, she’s racing. She’s just not holding the steering wheel.”

Undergoing not only a significant physical change but also a psychological one beyond what the typical woman experiences when she’s anticipating or stepping into motherhood, Pruett said, “I thought that I need to make sure I don’t have an identity crisis, racing my whole life, being in the driver’s seat, not knowing what it’s like to be a mom, being pregnant for all of 2024.”

So, she happily adopted the role of project manager for an initiative that Tony Stewart Racing had in place with Polara regarding what she described as “a tuning-optimization project” that she said is “something that we don’t feel has been utilized in this sport.” She immersed herself in that, as well as with a Funny Car task that focused on data applications and time management during race days and qualifying.

But ever since Stewart took an interest in driving a Top Fuel dragster, she has been encouraging him, a practice she never stopped doing – not even when she said she knew her hiatus would feel like eternity after losing a “winner-take-all for the championship” final round at the final race” in 2023.

Pruett said, “I am a starburst on the starting line because that’s exactly how I feel inside. And on a personal side, Tony’s true love besides his family is winning in everything. And so, to see him be able to accomplish that with the team just makes me so happy to see that he is fulfilled. So yeah, it’s awesome. I feel very thankful and grateful that I get to experience so many different aspects of drag racing from a sideline standpoint to working with the team to driving to all of it.

I’ve been given those opportunities, I’m making the most of all of ’em, and I walk away all the time as a very happy individual and a very thankful one to experience what I get to.”

He said the “hardest part of that for me was understanding I have two roles in this relationship. I’m first her husband, but second of all, I’m also her team owner. So, I think a lesson I had to learn pretty early was I was in race-owner mode. I was in race mode, period. And so, my questions were always when and timing. I wanted to know exactly what we were doing and when we were doing it so we could plan it the right way. I learned in one of the very first conversations about scheduling and everything about [this return of hers] that I needed to absolutely abandon car-owner mode and 1000% live in husband mode in this conversation. I think it was a great experience for us, honestly, as a couple, to go through this. My entire focus, my entire life, has been about race cars, race teams, trying to win races. And it was a really neat moment. It caught me off guard, and it kind of took me a minute to really understand where she was going with it.

“But,” Stewart said, “it was kind of a fun thing for your wife to go, ‘Hey, how about this is just us as a family versus you as a car owner at this point?’ I think it’s helped me shape my side of the relationship and what my expectations are. It’s helped me learn how to create a better balance in my life. Even when we’re home, we’re working, but having the work side of it, having the family side, and having the ability to balance that, I think it’s honestly made me a happier person just as a whole.”

He’ll still be happy – and she’ll still be happy – no matter what the results on the racetrack if they face each other.

“I’ve joked around from day one and said I thought it was a terrible idea, that if I beat her, I got kicked to the couch – which is 100 percent a joke – and if she wins, all my buddies call me and give me a hard time about how my wife kicked my butt. So, to me, it was a no-win situation as a joke. Yeah, I think deep down I would love the opportunity to get to line up against her,” Stewart said.

“But I can promise you the emotion would be no different than if we’re lining up against Doug Kalitta or Sean Langdon or Antron Brown or Justin Ashley or Steve Torrence, Clay Milliken, you name the field. I can 100 percent answer this for her as well (and I’m either going to get hit right now or she’s going to shake her head yes). But I can promise you we would get in the cars and we would get up in the water box and in our head we would be with the mentality that we want to rip each other’s heads off to win this race,” he said. “But that’s what you have to do with any competitor. That’s just the mentality you have to have.”

He said, “There’s that two-minute window when you’re in the car, in the water box, and they fire that motor up, and all you care about is beating whoever it is in that next lane. On the other side, she wants to rip my head off and turn that win light on at the top end. But we’re going to get out and we’re going to hug, and then I’m going to figure out where I’m going to sleep that night.”