Stewart wins Atlanta
HAMPTON, Ga. (AP) – At this point, Tony Stewart is racing only for pride and wins. On Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, he stole the spotlight from the title contenders with a win that clearly made him proud. Stewart, who failed to qualify for the 10-race Chase for championship after winning his second Nextel Cup title last season, held off Jimmie Johnson for his fourth victory of the season and second in the first seven races of the 2006 playoffs.
Afterward, he literally grabbed the checkered flag after a somewhat perilous climb up the flagstand in celebration.
“It’s better than last year,” said Stewart after jumping out of his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Chevrolet. “We were in it last year and couldn’t win any of these, so it’s a lot of fun.”
The runner-up finish was just fine with Johnson, though, as he moved within 26 points of series leader Matt Kenseth with three races remaining.
Johnson got off to a slow start in the Chase and was eighth, 156 points behind then-leader Jeff Burton just four weeks ago. But a second-place finish at Charlotte followed by the wins in Martinsville and second place here have put him right back into the mix for a shot at winning the one honor that has escaped him in his first four seasons in NASCAR’s top stock car series.
“We got off to a rough start (in the Chase), but we had the speed in the car and now we’re getting the results,” Johnson said. “It was a fun race. You really had to challenge yourself and scare yourself on every lap.”
Chase contenders Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kenseth fought it out for third place, with Earnhardt winning the battle by inches.
Earnhardt, who overcame losing a lap with a flat tire early in the race, took the lead when he stayed on track while all the other drivers on the lead lap pitted under caution on lap 306 of the 325-lap race on Atlanta’s 1.5-mile oval.
Non-contender Carl Edwards took only two tires and restarted in second place, with Stewart third, followed by Johnson and Kenseth.
Stewart grabbed second on the restart on lap 310 before a multicar crash brought out the last of nine caution flags in the race. The green flag came back out on lap 315 and Stewart shot past Earnhardt into the lead.
Johnson took second place on lap 318, but was not able to challenge Stewart the rest of the way, finishing nearly 2 seconds – about 15 car-lengths – behind the winner.
Two other Chasers had top 10 finishes, with Jeff Gordon sixth and rookie Danny Hamlin eighth. Everyone else in the title chase had a tough day.
Burton wound up 13th, a lap down, after having to pit under green late in the race with a flat tire; Kyle Busch crashed in the early going and wound up 27th; Kevin Harvick had handling problems all day and finished 31st; Mark Martin got caught up in the late crash and wound up 36th; and Kasey Kahne, who won at Atlanta in March and was the prerace favorite, crashed and finished 38th.
That scrambled the Chase standings, with Hamlin moving from fourth to third, 65 points behind Kenseth, and Earnhardt moving into a tie with Burton for fourth, 84 points back.
Harvick slipped from second all the way to sixth, 121 points behind, while Gordon – who survived getting hit it the rear by Jamie McMurray after slowing with a flat tire – jumped from ninth to seventh but lost ground in the points, from 141 to 146.
Martin, Kahne and Busch, all 201 or more points behind, were all but eliminated from contention.