There have been some good times for Tony Stewart in the past few weeks: He got engaged, and the sprint-car series he owns announced a television deal for next year. But other things haven’t been so great, like the fact that an angry fan’s been stalking him for years and he keeps wrecking sprint cars overseas.
Indiana news station Fox 59 reports that court documents say Stewart, who’s racing sprint cars in New Zealand this week, had a stalker for nearly two years after she said he ignored her attempts to get him to sign something. Authorities arrested Kathi Russell, 68, in late November after Fox 59 reports investigators said she made more than 300 phone calls to Stewart, his family and business partners from six different numbers.
The documents say phone calls would play the song “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads, a soundbite of Hillary Clinton saying “We came, we saw, he died,” report anonymous “tips” about Stewart or would sometimes be silent, according to Fox 59. The station reports that Russell “admitted to the repeated harassment” in court documents.
Whew. Sounds like Tony needs a break.
Heading to New Zealand for one of his favorite activities sounds like it would fit that description—something Autoweek reports that Stewart’s wanted to do since the mid 1990s. He flew his own race car from the U.S. to a shop in New Zealand, but its overseas debut isn’t treating it too kindly.
After a different wreck at Western Springs Speedway in Auckland, Stewart’s race car got into a crash flipped it at Robertson Holden International Speedway on Tuesday night local time:
Jalopnik can’t confirm what night this happened or how Stewart finished, since the racing series doesn’t appear to have a website it posts results on and Robertson Holden hasn’t updated its results webpage yet. But the car matches photos of the one Stewart took to the track, and it has the “Smoke” insignia on the driver’s side.
Stewart and the track also haven’t said anything about the wreck yet, but photos of the apparent aftermath show him walking away from the car. A comment from the YouTube user who uploaded a video also said he was fine afterward, but “wasn’t to happy with the other driver involved.” That sounds like him.
Here’s hoping Steward brought a back-up car, since Autoweek reports he still has another race in New Zealand and he’s given this one a real beating. Here’s also hoping that Russell didn’t memorize all those phone numbers she’s been calling for the past two years.