Stewart says leg feels fine after Daytona practice

Tony Stewart

Getty Images for NASCAR

All along, it seemed to be a cruel twist of fate that Tony Stewart – the man who perhaps loved to race more than anyone in NASCAR – was deprived of driving for more than six months.

His long wait finally ended at 4:42 p.m. on Friday, when he climbed back into his No. 14 car at Daytona International Speedway and strapped in to drive for the first time since badly breaking his right leg in an Aug. 5 sprint car crash in Iowa.

Gone was the #SmokeWillRise Twitter hashtag painted over the driver's door, which had been a constant as Max Papis, Austin Dillon and Mark Martin finished the 2013 season in the Chevrolet as Stewart was sidelined for the final 15 races. On Friday, the name over the door just said "Smoke."

"There's zero percentage of pain in the car," he said. "That was nice. We'll see what it feels like at 9 o'clock tonight, but that's better than I was hoping for, honestly. I thought we would have some kind of ache or pain, but it was like putting on an old pair of shoes again."

Stewart, still walking with a limp, arrived in his garage stall more than 20 minutes before the official start of practice for Saturday's Sprint Unlimited exhibition race. More than a dozen photographers captured him swinging his leg into the car; he later said he realized it would be a bad time to embarrass himself by falling on the ground.