A&E and SHR Bring ‘The Glades’ to KC

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In: NASCAR Cup Series News

Other than the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers in downtown Kansas City, water is probably the only connection Kansas City has to South Florida’s River of Grass, better known as the Everglades. But this weekend as the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series rolls into town for the STP 400 at Kansas Speedway, that all changes.

Tony Stewart is literally bringing the THE GLADES from South Florida to East Kansas in the form of his No. 14 Chevrolet Impala. The 800-horsepower stock car fielded by Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) will carry the design and colors of A&E’s original-scripted drama series THE GLADES throughout the Kansas race weekend.

Stewart shot a cameo for an upcoming episode of THE GLADES at Homestead-Miami Speedway that’s slated to air June 26, and in doing so, befriended lead actor Matt Passmore, who stars as Jim Longworth, an attractive and brilliant Chicago homicide detective with a reputation for being difficult. (As many media covering motorsports can easily imagine, Stewart and Passmore’s character are kindred spirits.)

Season two of THE GLADES debuts Sunday night on A&E just a few hours after the checkered flag drops on the Sprint Cup race at Kansas. Ideally, NASCAR fans and followers of THE GLADES can catch Stewart doing what he typically does at Kansas – running up front and winning – before turning into THE GLADES at 10 p.m. EDT/9 p.m. CDT.

The late-evening airing of THE GLADES might be to accommodate Stewart, who twice in his 10 visits to the 1.5-mile oval off I-70 has spent the afternoon/evening celebrating in victory lane. Stewart scored his first Kansas win in 2006 and knocked down a second victory in 2009. Among those wins are five top-fives and seven top-10s with a total of 132 laps led.

It’s obvious Stewart has solved the nuances of Kansas Speedway’s D-shaped layout. While unremarkable at first glance, Kansas provides multiple racing lines for drivers to wring the most from their racecars. And with different lines on the track, rubbing fenders and trading paint isn’t out of the ordinary.

As such, the track provides a connection to THE GLADES, which is set in the sleepy, middle-of-nowhere town of Palm Glade, outside of the Florida Everglades, where sunshine and golf are plentiful and crime is seemingly at a minimum. But Longworth, jettisoned to Palm Glade after a falling out with his police captain back in Chicago (his captain wrongfully accused him of sleeping with his wife and subsequently shot him!), Longworth soon finds out his new town isn’t quite as idyllic as he originally thought, when murders keep piling up. Each case pulls him off the golf course and reluctantly into his element as one of the sharpest homicide detectives to wear a badge.

With 39 career Sprint Cup wins and two championships, Stewart is one of the sharpest drivers to don a firesuit. And at Kansas, he’ll have Passmore, a.k.a. “Longworth,” riding along in spirit through 400 white-knuckle miles of racing. Just as the duo teamed up nearly two months ago, they’re back in action again this weekend, with a race slated for 1 p.m. EDT on FOX and THE GLADES drama scheduled for 10 p.m. EDT on A&E.

Stewart-Haas Racing PR

Speedway Digest Staff
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