Tony Stewart backed up his smack talk with a convincing victory in Sunday’s AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, the eighth race in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
With his fourth victory in the Chase and the 43rd of his career, Stewart put a dent in runner-up Carl Edwards’ series lead, scoring maximum points (48) to trim Edwards’ advantage from eight to three points with two races left in the season.
After winning last week at Martinsville, Stewart promised Edwards a sleepless three weeks during the stretch run for the title. On Sunday afternoon, Stewart let his car do the talking, taking the lead from Edwards on a Lap 275 restart and coming back to the front through a cycle of green-flag pit stops late in the race.
Stewart didn’t regain the lead until Lap 330 of 334, when Jeff Burton lost his fuel-mileage gamble and ran out of gas with a little more than four laps left.
Edwards, whose lone win this year came at Las Vegas in March, found consolation in retaining the points lead and in putting distance between himself and third-place Kevin Harvick (33 points back) and fourth-place Matt Kenseth (38 points back). NASCAR.com
“Do not count us out of this thing,” Stewart said. “Carl kept us honest today, but we did everything we could do. We got all the bonus points we could get and got the win. We gained more than we needed to gain on the average for the week so we‘re doing good.
“If you can do simple math, you can figure out that we gained over half of it in one week and we got two weeks to go, so it doesn‘t take much right now. It‘s one spot if a guy wins a race. We‘re doing exactly what we need to do. I‘m really confident right now.”
Despite claiming before the start of the Chase that he didn’t “deserve” a position in NASCAR’s playoffs, Stewart has rifled off four wins in the first eight events and shows no signs of slowing down.
Stewart’s dominating performance at Texas even took Edwards by surprise. Although Edwards has led the points for the last five weeks, Stewart has masterfully whittled away at the No. 99 team’s points lead.
“The surprising thing for all of us today was how well Tony ran here,” Edwards said. “I didn’t expect him to run quite that well. Those guys, they did a really good job. It makes me think that (the season finale at) Homestead could be a lot closer than I expected before this race. FOXSports.com
Suspended driver Kyle Busch attended the 500-mile race at Texas, sitting atop his team’s pit box and watching Michael McDowell drive his No.18 car to a 33rd-place finish. Busch was parked for this event as well as Saturday’s Nationwide race for deliberately wrecking Ron Hornaday Jr. in Friday night’s Camping World Truck Series event at this track.
Busch fell to 11th in the point standings and is now one of three drivers mathematically eliminated from the Sprint Cup Series title. Ryan Newman and Denny Hamlin have also been eliminated from the championship battle.
Jimmie Johnson, the five-time defending series champion, finished 14th and dropped 55 points out of the lead. Fox News
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NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: AAA Texas 500 at Texas - Race Results
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