Joey Paxson (1) and Tony Stewart (14) make their way through Stewart’s All-Star TQ Midget Series event at the Bartholomew County Fairgrounds in Columbus, Ind., Tuesday, June 25, 2024.
Nicholas Shaw for The Republic
The Bartholomew County 4-H Fairgrounds dodged a major storm Tuesday evening, and that allowed Tony Stewart’s All-Star Three-Quarter Midget Series to run on the track that bears his name.
Some lightning, followed by a light rain led to a delay of about an hour at the start of the event. But then 19 drivers, led by Joey Paxson of Connersville, put on a show for those in attendance.
“I thought the fair board did a great job with the track,” Stewart said. “We all were watching the radar all day, and I thought it was very doubtful that we were even going to get a race in tonight. We got very lucky with the big part of the cell going below the racetrack.”
Stewart finished third in the feature. Paxson took the lead from Johnny Goff on Lap 9 of the 25-lap event and wasn’t threatened after that in racing to victory.
“Tonight, I wasn’t worried,” Paxson said. “I felt really good. You can’t pass people by following them around, so you just have to go where they’re not.”
Goff, who hails from Fortville, finished second. Stewart took third, followed by Logan Prickett of Shelbyville and Evan Shatto of Columbus.
Stewart qualified fourth and finished second in his heat race after finally getting around Goff on the final turn of the final lap. But in the feature, Goff thwarted each of Stewart’s attempts over the final 16 laps to pass him for second.
“They did a good job having (the track) ready, but the good thing is, it made it slick off, and it made the groove really wide and it gave us a lot of options. That’s why we were able to get around Johnny in the heat race. We had a second lane to get around him. The main, I think lanes were pretty even. I thought the top might have been a little bit better at the very beginning, but it seemed like for me — and I was on a different tire than Joey was on — but I just felt like the first eight were my best laps, the next eight were probably a little bit slower and the the last seven were even slower than that. So we didn’t gain speed. We just kind of lost speed. I’m not even sure, other than maybe a different regular tire, what I would change right now.”
Stewart’s father, 86-year-old Nelson Stewart, was running in the top 10 until an accident just three laps from the finish.
Tony Stewart, who only competes in a few TQ midget events each year, won earlier this month at Circle City Raceway in Indianapolis. Tuesday’s win was Paxson’s third of the season.
“We were solid,” Tony Stewart said. “We just weren’t good enough to run with Joey. Joey has these things figured out. He’s on top of his game right now. I knew it was going to be tough keeping up with him. I’m a little more timid in traffic because I don’t run with these guys, and I don’t trust the guys I’m running around very much because you just don’t know what they do. Joey runs with them every week. He knows who does what, and he takes that confidence and does a great job getting through traffic. It’s kind of like whoever gets through traffic and gets the lead first is the guy that’s probably going to finish it off, and he got through first. Even if we’d have gotten around Johnny, we weren’t going to catch Joey. He was better than we were the whole main event, I felt like.”
