Every weekend during racing season, #14-Tony Stewart deals with the pressure of going around a track very fast. Stewart got a taste of a different degree of pressure Tuesday afternoon [Jan 20] at MacDill Air Force Base when he took a spin on a console that simulates the delicate operation of mid-air refueling. “You are trying to push a needle through a haystack and see how intense it is and the condition these guys have to go through,” Stewart said, describing his turn at the BOWST simulator used to help train those who operate the boom on the KC-135 aerial refueling jet. “To think there is only a three-man crew and two of them are on the front of the plane, and one guy is laying on his stomach in the back of the plane, running the nozzle “¦ you can tell that takes a lot of precision to do that. We’re not talking about scratching a body panel. You’re talking about scratching a multi-million dollar airplane. So definitely that’s a lot of pressure for the guy that runs the nozzle.” Stewart, fellow driver Kyle Larson and Joie Chitwood III, Daytona International Speedway president, were at MacDill on Tuesday to kick off the annual USO tour of military bases. “This is something we wish we got to do more often,” said Stewart, a three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion. “Without these men and women we wouldn’t get the chance to do what we do every weekend.” Aside from the simulator, the NASCAR contingent witnessed a military dog exhibition and got to tour a KC-135 that rolled off the assembly line in 1962.(Tampa Tribune)(1-21-2015)
