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Stewart cruises to Atlanta victory

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News
October 29, 2006

HAMPTON, Ga. – Benefiting from a four-tire call on his final pit stop, Tony Stewart drove away from the rest of the field on an 11-lap green flag run and won the Bass Pro Shops 500 Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Jimmie Johnson finished second, gained 15 points on fourth-place finisher Matt Kenseth and narrowed Kenseth’s lead in the Chase for the NASCAR Nextel Cup to 26 points. Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran third and moved into a tie for fourth place in the Cup standings with Jeff Burton, 84 points behind Kenseth.

Greg Biffle came home fifth, followed by Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin (third in points, 65 back), Joe Nemechek and Robby Gordon – in a race in which the championship hopes of Kasey Kahne and Mark Martin suffered irreparable damage.

Stewart won his fourth race of the season and 28th of his career. Starting 11th because Friday’s qualifying session was rained out, Stewart took the lead for the first time on Lap 24, when he passed Earnhardt in Turn 1. All told, Stewart led 146 laps, more than any other driver.

On the next-to-last caution of the night on Lap 305, all the leaders pitted for tires except Earnhardt. On the restart on Lap 310, a chain-reaction wreck that resulted from contact between Kenny Wallace and Jeff Green collected Martin’s No. 6 Ford and all but turned the lights out on his title hopes.

Jeff Gordon had one of the strongest cars in the field, but moments after surrendering the lead to Stewart on Lap 158, the driver of the No. 24 ran out of room trying to pass Nemechek on the outside and scraped the wall.

Twelve laps after the contact with the wall, Gordon blew his right front tire in Turn 2 and managed to keep the car off the wall. But Jamie McMurray, running behind Gordon and blinded by the late afternoon glare, rear-ended the No. 24 and sent the car spinning toward the infield.

Gordon restarted 13th on Lap 178 and worked his way toward the front in the final third of the race.

Kahne wasn’t so fortunate. After fighting a loose condition early in the race, Kahne had cracked the top five by Lap 202, but on Lap 249 he “forgot” that David Stremme was on the outside as the drivers approached Turn 1, turned up into Stremme’s No. 40 Dodge and wrecked both machines against the outside wall.

Kahne finished 38th and fell 210 points behind Kenseth. Martin, who ran 36th, is 201 points out of the lead.

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