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Jeff and I built this 33 car at Stewart's shop right before he passed. I definitly miss that man and his brotherly love.
-Rick Stewart-
The Dream
Born into a racing family Rick Stewart’s destiny was paved long before he ever turned a wrench. Rick’s father Paul had raced as long as anyone can remember, and so the inheritance began. The Stewart family was part of the great Arizona racing scene of the 1950's, and were friends with such notables as Clint Brawner, Roger McCluskey, Joe Pittman, and Jimmy Bryan. In fact, Jimmy was Rick's God Father. Any wonder Rick loved racing. Like so many of the sports greats Rick began his career in building cars early in life. He began by building a dune buggy while still a freshman in high school, then rapidly followed that effort with a Super Modified. The Super proved to be a successful venture for himself and his good friend Jerry Miller. As expected, Jerry ended up driving it after Rick discovered he had a hard time figuring out which side was suppose to be up. This left Rick with one option, to work on the very cars he built. In 1973 Rick opened his own shop "Stewart Fabricating" and for the next 35 years his legacy began to grow through master his craftsmanship and innovative ideas.
The Man
Rick is well known for his 35 years of race chassis and street rod building prowess. Even with that said his greatest contribution to motor sports was simply Rick being the person he was. His shop was open to any racer in need of repairs, and was used by many out of town racers as their home base while in Phoenix. He was always willing to help anyone with set-ups regardless of what brand of car you had. Rick enjoyed showing others the skills of the trade more than anything else, many other fabricators learned a great deal from Rick. Examples of this continuously poured from the doors of Stewart Fabrication such as; Steve Phillips, Ron Krepple, Danny Drinan, or Jerry Miller (Who is the current fabrication supervisor at Red Bull's NASCAR operation) or Jeff Slinkard, Rick's long time employee/partner. On the lighter side, Rick’s shop was always filled with laughter and the New Years parties are well renowned. Rick always had time for everyone, and loved showing off his vast collection of racing memorabilia to anyone interested.
The Cars
Based out of Phoenix, Az, Stewart chassis won several championship titles in various regions and ranks throughout the United States. Rick built his first race car in the spring of 1973, it was a Chevy 2 powered midget pretty much like the others of that era except that it had all of the running gear from a Drake Powered Kurtis, which belonged to Billy Vukovich. Many commented on his new midget noting how exceptional it worked. Quickly the orders for cars started to come in. Soon the shop was building Midgets, Quarter Midgets, Sprints and Silver Crown cars. In addition, they completed repairs and/or component fabrication on everything from Airplanes to Indy Cars.
His drivers read like the who's who of the world of racing with such notables as Stan Fox, Tony Stewart, Aaron Fike, Leland McSpadden, Gary Schroder, Ronnie Shuman, and Richard Griffin (who won 26 main events in 1987) as well as scores of others.
Rick's Midgets have won most every major race at one time or another, Including; The Belleville Nationals, The Chili Bowl, Turkey Night, only to be validated by Sprint Car wins at The Western World Championships, and Knoxville Nationals, just to name a few. If you ever had the privilege to own a Stewart Fabricating race car you immediately realized that it was more than just a race car,……it was an extension of Rick.
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