Tony Stewart Out, Wife Leah Pruett Back In the Family Top Fuel Dragster for 2026

Make no mistake, said racer Tony Stewart in a press conference this morning with his wife, Leah Pruett: “This was always the plan.”

What plan would that be? That Pruett, who gave her seat as the driver of the family NHRA Top Fuel car to her inexperienced husband, Stewart, in order to concentrate on starting a family at the end of the 2023 season, would someday return to her driving duties.

And that will happen at the start of the 2026 drag racing season, with Stewart, who is presently battling to be the 2025 NHRA Top Fuel champion, stepping aside, and actively looking for a ride. Despite a long list of racing accomplishments, including an IndyCar championship, a USAC Triple Crown championship, an IROC championship and a USAC National Midget championship, he wants to stay in drag racing, and doesn’t rule out competing against Pruett, and possibly the team’s Funny Car driver, Matt Hagan.

Pruett, 37, is a 12-time NHRA Top Fuel event winner. She finished the 2023 season third in the Top Fuel championship standings, which is the highest she’s finished in her 14-year Top Fuel career. During the past couple of years, she said she has realized that her “only true love, besides family, is winning.”

Stewart, 54, a three-time NASCAR Cup series champion, last drove in NASCAR in 2016, but continued as a team owner. He pivoted into the drag racing world prior to his marriage to Pruett in 2021. He owns Tony Stewart Racing, fielding the Top Fuel car as well as a Funny Car for former champ Hagan, who is third in points behind John Force Racing drivers Austin Prock and Jack Beckman.

Stewart entered the NHRA as a driver in the Sportsman division, and when the couple decided that Pruett would stop driving, he stepped into that role, despite having no Nitro car experience. Stewart finished the 2024 season in ninth place and won Rookie of the Year honors. While 2024 would best be described as a learning year, Stewart was upset at pre-season testing for the 2025 season, fearful that he and his team had not progressed.

But with the first event in 2025 at Gainesville Raceway in Florida in March, the team suddenly jelled and became an immediate contender, and he consistently runs 330 mph, from a standing start, in 1000 feet. Stewart has led the points for much of the 2025 season. With six races left, including this weekend’s Reading Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway in Pennsylvania, Stewart has a narrow 16-point lead over Shawn Langdon and is 31 points ahead of Langdon’s teammate, Doug Kalitta. The 20-race season wraps up November 16 at Pomona Dragstrip, outside Los Angeles.

And, by then, hopefully Stewart will have found something to do in 2026. He said to not put too much emphasis on the fact that six weeks ago, he tested a Pro Stock car with former champion Erica Enders’ team; in fact, he said that he prefers Nitro, which would leave only Top Fuel and Funny Car as possibilities.

Where Stewart and Pruett have found unqualified success is in the plan to become parents, as son Dominic was born in November of 2024.

Regardless of what is in store for Stewart, he admits that his “career path has taken a lot of twists and turns,” but no matter what happens in racing, “Having a child is way scarier.”