MIPS: Stewart earns Hall of Fame honours.

Legendary team boss Brian Stewart has lived and breathed racing for the last 40 years, winning championships both as a driver and an owner, and that passion and success will now be rewarded by an induction into the Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame.

The Infiniti Pro Series team owner will be recognised, along with twelve others, at the Mississauga Convention Centre in Toronto on 29 January.

"If you take the names out of Canada - the Villeneuves, the Carpentiers, the Tracys - Brian Stewart is probably one of the best-known Canadian personalities in motorsports," said MIPS executive director Roger Bailey, who has known Stewart for more than 20 years, "And he's certainly one of the best ambassadors Canadian motorsports has ever had."

Stewart's story has humble beginnings. Born in Port Glasgow, Scotland, during World War II, his family emigrated to Canada in 1948 to seek opportunities away from an area that had been devastated by the conflict. Stewart soon fell in love with cars.

"I liked cars, liked to get my hands dirty working as a mechanic," he recalled, "I was a mechanic on foreign cars, in particular German cars, and a guy that was a good customer and eventually became a good friend, he bought a Formula Vee. He asked whether I would like to work on it - and I did.

"It turned out that I could drive it faster than he could. I had no racing history - I just played hockey - but I could drive it faster than he could, and the guy just walked away on the deal. He just walked away from the car and said 'this is your sport'. Once you start winning in racing, it's hard to walk away."

Winning is something Stewart did a lot of.

"I was on the pace the whole time that I raced," he continued, "There was never a race where I would be mid-pack or last or anything like that. The only time I wasn't on the podium was if I crashed the car, which I did sometimes. For me, it was just a mental thing. I used to say 'if I've got the same engine and the same tyres as all these other people, how could they possibly beat me?'. That's the way I looked at it.

"Formula Ford was like that, Formula Vee was like that. Everything I ever did was what I would call a 'spec series' - the same tyres as everyone else, the same motor as everyone else. The rest of it is just putting the car together. The driver has to drive the car."

Stewart started in Formula Vee, winning the Canadian national championship in 1969 and competing at the world championship at the N?rburgring in Germany. After that, he raced Formula Ford, claiming the Canadian championship in 1972.

"I went to the Formula Ford world championships at Brands Hatch, and finished twelfth [out of 200]. Of course, if you're a race driver, you're devastated by finishing twelfth. It's only years later that you realise that it wasn't too bad."

At 30 years of age, however, Stewart realised that his dream of competing in Formula One was getting out of reach. He turned his focus and 'can't be beat' attitude to the ownership side of racing, where he's continued his winning ways for more than 30 years.

"I owned some Formula Fords, owned a Super Vee, owned Vees, and I went and grabbed some young guys and put them in there, made them win, insisted that they win," he said, "I did the car myself, coached them on the driving. Over the years, I had this line of young guys. When you take a young guy, and you give him a good car, and he has confidence that nothing is going to fall off of it, then he's prepared to drive it to the nth degree."

Stewart campaigned drivers such as Danny Burritt, Burke Harrison, Tom Kristoff, Scott Maxwell and Marty Roth, winning championships in several Formula series. Then, in 1988, he made the decision to enter Indy Lights, a series which his teams dominated for the next 14 years. Stewart fielded British F3 champion Tommy Byrne in 1989, winning four races, and, the next year, Paul Tracy drove Stewart's car to victory lane nine times.

"You do something like that, and the next year I had Parnelli Jones phone me up," the team owner remembered, "It's weird as anything for a guy like me - you're growing up and Parnelli Jones is on this pedestal, and then you're sitting across a desk from him and behind him on his wall are the Vel's/Parnelli Jones F1 cars, the Vel's Indy cars, just one thing after another, and Parnelli is sitting there, and you're negotiating with him. Of course, he's a hard negotiator, as am I. Anyway, bottom line is we did a deal for PJ [Jones], and I ran PJ. The next year I did Frank Freon and Bryan Herta and, from then on, you just had all these drivers coming to you."

The list of drivers included Airton Dare, Cristiano da Matta, Jaques Lazier, Sergio Paese and Luis Garcia. In total, Stewart's teams won 31 races, 27 pole positions and two championships.

When Indy Lights disbanded, Stewart considered joining his long-time friend Bailey in the Menards Infiniti Pro Series, and a chance encounter with Roth sealed his decision.

"I was out at Mosport, at a club race, and Marty was out there spectating, I was spectating, and he told me he wanted to get back into racing," Stewart explained, "I said that I'd like to go to this Pro Series with the IRL, and he said 'that's good, because I want to go to Indy'. Marty came to my house, we did a deal, bought a car, started running it."

The two paired up for twelve races in 2002 and 2003, before Stewart 'graduated' another racer. Roth formed his own team in 2004, and achieved his dream by qualifying for the Indianapolis 500.

"It's my job to get the drivers to the next level," Stewart explained, "If they stay with me for one year and go to the next level, then I did my job. That's the way I look at it. I don't want to keep them forever because, if I do that, I didn't do my job."

Stewart's dedication to developing winners hasn't gone unnoticed. He'll be forever enshrined in the Hall of Fame.