In one of the most remarkable comebacks, of the year and the race, Tony Stewart held off Carl Edwards to clinch his third NASCAR Sprint Cup Championships.
It was Stewart’s fifth win in the Chase, a record which was the tie-breaker as Edwards had no wins in the ten-race “playoff.” There was also the irony of Stewart who had no wins in the first 26 races of the year and he said that he didn’t belong in NASCAR Chase starting 10th, but, with those five unprecedented victories in the Chase overtook the consistent top drive of Carl Edwards.
Tony Stewart, who started 15th on Sunday, faced a possible disaster when debris put a hole in the grill of his Chevy’s radiator. He also ran into David Reutimann. A lengthy pit stop dropped him back to 40th but that didn’t stop the team. "After the way those first 109 laps went today", said Stewart from Victory Lane, "I could not be more proud. We had the problem early and had the hole in the nose, everybody on this team did a great job of getting it back going, then we had the contact with (David) Reutimann and had to come back in and fix it again. I told them “Man, it is really going to make these guys mad when we come back twice and still kick their butt”. It was optimism and trying to keep the guys pumped up and then to come out here and actually do it, is awesome." Stewart took the lead for the first time on lap 123, of the 267-lap race which was stopped for over one hour due to rain at the Homestead Miami Speedway.
Carl Edwards was a gentleman in a defeat which had no shame. "They beat us fair and square," said Edwards. "That's all I had at the end. My guys did a really good job. We led the most laps and Tony still managed, you know, him and Darian to do a good job with their strategy, come out in that's all I got at the end. That's as hard as I can drive. So I told my wife, if I can't win this thing I'll be the best loser NASCAR has ever had so I'm going to try very hard to keep my head up and know that we'll go next year and be just as hard to beat next year and just as hard the year after that but I just hope everybody is proud of the way we performed and our effort." Although Edwards led the most laps, 119 laps, Stewart and Grubb’s gamble on fuel allowed him to take the lead on lap 232 and hold off Edwards who also needed to top up with fuel. The difference was that Stewart took four tires on his final stop while Edwards took two. That gives Stewart the confidence to take the lead and hold-off Edwards by 1.3 seconds. Martin Truex finished third. After the race NASCAR issued a statistic that he passed 118 cars on his way to this victory. Stewart’s hero the four-time Indy500 winner, A.J. Foyt, commented “It was a great race. I was a little worried in the beginning because it seemed like something happened to Tony every time he got to the front. He had to win it to win the championship and I think Tony drove the best race of his life. It was great to see the 14 win again. I am real proud of him!” Stewart said Foyt called him to say that “that brings a tear to your eye.”
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