"Stop the wedding!"

That's what Tony Stewart yelled into his cell phone one Saturday last October as his Learjet touched down at Purdue University Airport, 20 miles from the church on the other side of Lafayette, Ind., where his little sister, Natalie, was about to be married -- in 15 minutes.

Under the circumstances, getting to the church on time might seem impossible. But you're not Tony Stewart. Flying in from Charlotte, where his practice session for the UAW-GM Quality 500 had been rained out, Stewart jumped down from the plane onto the tarmac and bolted for the pilot's waiting Oldsmobile, loosening his tie and securing his shades before sliding behind the wheel. Every bolt in the Olds rattled as Stewart blasted through the hills of his Indiana home, pushing the speedometer near triple digits.

	Stewart sometimes tosses good judgment out the window.

Just 12 minutes after touching down, Stewart screeched the four-door sedan to a halt, its tires nearly liquefied, its hood coughing up puffs of smoke. Stewart cinched his tie, tiptoed into the packed brick church and slid past the bridesmaids three-wide. Then he opened the door to the bridal chamber. "Natalie just spun around, burst into tears and fell into his arms," says Stewart's mom, Pam. "It was the most precious moment of all of our lives. But there were vapor trails behind that car when he landed at the church. And, yes, before you correct me, I do mean landed."

***

Tony Stewart can drive anything on wheels. But what drives Tony Stewart? Money, pride, guilt. They all add up to one thing: There is no more perilous place to sit than between Stewart and his destination -- be it an Indiana church, the finish line or the top of the Winston Cup standings. Because if you're not helping Stewart get there, you're gonna get shoved out of the way. Just ask him.

Stewart on fans: "You want an autograph? Well I want to find out why my race car was driving like a piece of s---. And to me that's way more important than signing some piece of paper."

On other drivers: "You know what kills me? Seeing an interview with a guy who just crashed and looks right into the camera and says, 'Oh the such-and-such car had a great day.' Hey, you just lied to all the fans. You finished 35th! If you truly had a great car, then you must have sucked."

On his friends: "If I ever accept losing I'd hope [car owner] Joe Gibbs fires me on the spot. And if my driver Danny Lasoski ever had that attitude, I'd fire his ass -- and he's one of my best friends."

On himself: "I'm just an intense, passionate person who wants more than anything to be successful. And if some people get pissed off along the way -- well, I'm sorry, but so be it."

Thank goodness there were no grannies sputtering down the road to a canasta game that wedding day in Lafayette. Grandma might have had to duck a pair of heat shields rifled at her melon, just like Kenny Irwin had to after bumping Stewart out of a race in 1999. Maybe Stewart would have shoved the old lady like he did Robby Gordon after the two bent fenders at Daytona in 2000. Or perhaps he would have spun her out like he did Jeff Gordon on pit road after the Bristol race in March 2001.

So maybe Stewart could use an internal tachometer to warn him of his emotional red line. But it's that single-minded intensity, coupled with instinct and nerve, that makes Stewart, 31, a singular talent. Says one racing veteran who helped develop both Stewart and four-time Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon, "Same track, same car, same crew? Tony beats the crap out of Jeff ... every ... single ... time."

But when it comes to championships, Stewart is still tracking Gordon. Stewart won NASCAR's 1999 Winston Cup Rookie of the Year, and his 14 wins since '99 are second only to Gordon's 16 on the circuit. But he is far from satisfied. When other drivers would look at a season and say, "Wow, I won three times," Stewart screams, "Dammit, I lost 35 times."

It's that intensity that will drive him either to the top or over the edge. Stewart's outbursts trigger emotional fallouts on the No. 20 Home Depot Pontiac team, and they bring NASCAR sanctions that erode his focus. "Who you are as a person is who you are behind the wheel," says NASCAR legend Richard Petty. "You can't separate the two. Tony's attitude affects his driving. But if he gets to where he matures as a person before first messing himself all up as a driver, Tony can be a great one. I mean, the sky would be the limit for him."

Four months after tangling with Jeff Gordon, Stewart blew another gasket at the night race in Daytona last July. After charging from 36th to third with four laps to go, Stewart plunged below the yellow line because, he says, Johnny Benson pinched down on top of him. Although officials black-flagged him for the move, Stewart refused to pull his Pontiac off the track. Later, when he was told NASCAR would not reverse the penalty, Stewart had to be physically restrained by his owner, Gibbs, and his crew chief, Greg Zipadelli, from pummeling Winston Cup series director Gary Nelson. Then, approached for comment by a reporter, Stewart slapped a tape recorder out of his hands and kicked it under a truck. He apologized to the reporter but was fined $10,000 by NASCAR and put on probation until the end of last season.

Alone in his hauler and frustrated after jeopardizing his best chance at a Winston Cup title (he finished 26th at Daytona), Stewart broke down and cried. He had to change. But acquiring patience can be torture for a hammer-down driver like Stewart because the process is so counterintuitive to the very nature of racing.

"I'm not perfect by any means, in any aspect," Stewart says. "But I have never done anything to intentionally disappoint someone, hurt their feelings or make them mad. It's just not who I am. I guess the bottom line is I don't want to be a superstar, don't even care about it. All I want is for people to respect me for what I can do in a race car."

Stewart did his best to retreat from the spotlight, trying to low-key his way through the rest of the season. He finished second to Gordon by a distant 349 points, and entered the off-season with a new plan -- avoid the media in the hopes of avoiding controversy. His time would be better spent devoted to his team, not to damage control.

This season, people are seeing a new Tony Stewart. So far, he has kept his cool on the track and in the garage, even after finishing dead last in the Daytona 500. Without a single conniption fit, he has seven top-five finishes and two wins in16 starts despite driving the slowest make in the field, a Pontiac. He's fifth in the standings and still learning to be hard-charging without being hardheaded.

"Tony's time is coming," warns Dodge racing chief Ray Evernham, who was Jeff Gordon's original crew chief. "He just needs to remain himself -- drive it hard and don't take any crap from anyone. Because there will be a time in this sport when the champion needs to be a charger like Tony. And when it does, his championships will come."

Unlike Gordon, whose undeniable talent was backed by an unlimited bankroll, Stewart's career hasn't been bolstered by deep family funds. Tony started racing go-karts competitively in his hometown of Columbus, Ind., when he was 7, and by the time he was 12 he'd shown such promise that the Stewarts took a second mortgage on the house to fund his driving. To save more money, holes in the sheetrock and other home repairs went unmended for, "oh," says Mom, "15 years or so." Natalie gave up gymnastics for her brother; Nelson gave up his own racing career for his son's.

Even though Stewart won championships for nearly every owner who took a chance on him -- from go-karts to midgets to sprint cars to the IRL -- he still feels his career has put him in arrears.

Says Stewart, "I couldn't put all the people I am indebted to in my big ol' house -- standing up."

It's that guilt of owing everyone that still fuels Stewart, as if all those folks were riding shotgun. Maybe that's why he bought and restored his childhood home; why Tony Stewart Motorsports fields a fleet of sprint car teams, including World of Outlaws champ Danny Lasoski; and why TSM has hired another driver, a 63-year-old former crew member named Nelson Stewart.

"To see my dad racing again, having fun, with that expression on his face, it means everything to me," says Stewart. "He gave up his racing life to give me one, so now I'm giving it back to him."

If only he could do the same for Kenny Irwin. Stewart and his dirt-track nemesis had rubbed race cars and raw nerves since their go-kart years in central Indiana. They had pushed each other around the local bull rings and straight up the ladder of the U.S. Auto Club brackets. In 1995, Tony became the only driver ever to win the USAC Midget, Sprint and Silver Crown national titles in one season; a year later Irwin won the National Midget Championship. A year after Irwin won Winston Cup's Rookie of the Year in 1998, Stewart took home the same honor. The two men equally respected and reviled each other.

Then, eight months after Stewart tossed shoes at him during a caution lap in Martinsville, on July 7, 2000, Irwin died during practice in New Hampshire. A distraught Stewart won the race after publicly dedicating it to his rival, and following a celebration in a rain-soaked victory lane, Stewart quietly flew to Indiana and gave the trophy to Irwin's parents. "What I'm most proud of," Stewart says, "is that you go to any track on any level and they'll tell you I haven't forgotten where I came from."

***

Stewart can't seem to get the mud out of his treads, even during a rare day off in May at his bachelor estate on Lake Norman, outside Charlotte. A house full of diversion awaits him: three satellite dishes, a video arcade, Foosball, a lakeside hammock, Sea-Doos and shelves of untouched novels with their Dewey decimal stickers still attached.

Instead, Stewart parks himself in an overstuffed armchair to watch a tape of his favorite race. It's not one of his Winston Cup wins or Indy car triumphs -- it's the Chili Bowl. Over three days last January in Tulsa, 168 Midget cars (900-pound machines with 340 horsepower, a tachometer and little else) churned up the chunky, red-dirt oval. Submerged in his armchair, Stewart relives every draft, every turn, jeering himself for passing too wide and cheering himself on as he saws his way out of the pack and literally rides the rail all the way to the checkers.

"That's one of my biggest wins ever," he says. "That's the real Tony Stewart, right there. Winston Cup is my job, but this racing is my passion."

To Gibbs' dismay, Stewart sneaks off a dozen times a year to score his dirt-track fix. No jock-sniffing sponsors breathing down his neck. No obnoxious fans or uninformed media. No candy-ass corporate shills happy to finish seventh. You just show up at the track, crank wrenches under the hood, play Pick the Hack (a pool to predict who wrecks first), race your guts out, get in a fight or two, shake hands and spend your pay dirt on a couple of cold ones. "It's pure," says Stewart.

It's where he's from. And, one way or another, it's where Tony Stewart is headed.

"I won't retire from racing as a Winston Cup driver," Stewart promises. "As soon as I make enough money to maintain the lifestyle I enjoy right now, without having to work another day -- I'm gone. And the next day I'll be on a dirt track somewhere, hitting it."

This article appears in the July 8 issue of ESPN The Magazine.