Tony Stewart will have some familiar company racing alongside him in the Superstar Racing Experience (SRX). On Wednesday, the new series announced Bobby Labonte as the fourth confirmed driver for the inaugural season in summer 2021.
Labonte and Stewart were team-mates at Joe Gibbs Racing from 1995 to 2005, during which the former won the 2000 NASCAR Cup Series championship while the latter scored two in 2002 and 2005. Racing in NASCAR’s top level from 1991 to 2016, Labonte scored twenty-one victories and 411 top-ten finishes. He also won the 1991 now-Xfinity Series title and is one of thirty-three drivers to have won a race in all three NASCAR national series (Cup, Xfinity, Truck).
He was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2020. Between his final Cup race and his induction, Labonte continued racing overseas in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series, finishing fourteenth in the 2018 Elite 1 (now EuroNASCAR Pro) standings with a best finish of second at the oval Tours Speedway.
The Texas native is the fourth driver to lock his entry into SRX. In addition to Stewart, a pair of IndyCar Series racers in Tony Kanaan and Paul Tracy joined the fray in late July.
SRX is intended to be a spec racing series with similarities to the defunct International Race of Champions (IROC). Incidentally, Labonte won the 2001 IROC championship with Stewart finishing second. Unlike IROC, SRX will focus on short tracks.
