Stewart wins; Chase is shuffled

FORT WORTH —  Tony Stewart says he’s racing in a different league from NASCAR’s championship contenders.

No doubt about that.

From the outside looking in, Stewart continued his rampage through the Chase for the Nextel Cup championship, winning his third race -- and second consecutive -- in the playoffs for which he missed the cut.

He dominated the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway even more thoroughly -- leading an overwhelming 278 of the 339 laps -- than the Atlanta race he won breezily last Sunday.

For the second straight week Jimmie Johnson was the highest-finishing Chaser behind Stewart, coming in second. And that vaulted Johnson into the points lead ahead of Matt Kenseth, who struggled all race and wound up 12th.

But when Stewart says he’s in a different league from the Chasers, he means a much easier one.

Precisely because he missed the cut for the playoffs, “it’s a lot easier on a day like today, when I’m not worried about points,” he said.

“All I cared about was winning that race. I wasn’t worried about where any of those guys in the points were....

“It’s two totally separate races now, each week. Those 10 guys have got 10 times more pressure than I’ve got just going out and trying to win a race.”

Once Stewart took the lead 43 laps into the race, he lost it only during pit stop cycles and had only two fleeting occasions even to be concerned.

Kasey Kahne closed on Stewart with about 45 laps left but faded and later fell out entirely with a blown engine.

During his brief challenge, “I thought we were flying, but Tony was still better than I was,” Kahne said.

For the green-white-checkered overtime finish, Johnson, on four fresh tires to Stewart’s two, got to bunch up behind Stewart for the two-lap dash. However, Stewart’s Chevrolet had no trouble holding off Johnson’s.

“Tony was the best all night long,” Johnson said of a race that finished under the lights because the start was delayed nearly an hour by rain.

“We started making some gains at the end,” Johnson continued, but at the finish “it really went a lot like Atlanta: We just didn’t have anything for him.”

On their final green-flag pit stops, Stewart had taken only two tires to maintain track position, and Johnson gambled by taking four, hoping that would give him an edge at the end.

But Johnson and his crew chief, Chad Knaus, at first appeared to have blown their call.

“When we went back onto the track I was like 10th or something, and I thought, man, this isn’t a good idea,” Johnson said. “But my four tires gave me a little bit of an advantage and I was able to pass people, and I was at least able to get back to where I was before the pit stop. So, no harm, no foul.”

“It’s a little more nerve-wracking when you’ve got a guy with four tires behind you,” Stewart said of the overtime restart.

But all it really did was awaken Stewart from his cruise. His last lap was the fastest of the race, 187.188 mph.

“I felt we had the perfect car all day, and we really did,” Stewart said. “Today was just one of those days.

“In the 27 years I’ve been racing” in various types of cars, “I can count on two hands the cars I’ve had that were as good as this one today.”

Johnson was eighth, 156 points behind, after the fourth race of the Chase. Since then, he has been on a steady climb, with three second-place finishes and a win, and now leads by 17 points.

“We’ve had so much fun racing for this since we were down and out early, we don’t want to lose that,” Johnson said. “We want to keep racing and having fun.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr., with a sixth-place finish after fighting back from a brush with the wall, moved into third in the Chase. But, 78 points back, he is essentially leader of the longshots.

The most unfortunate Chaser of the race was Jeff Burton, who’d led the playoff standings in the early weeks. Burton crashed with a blown right-front tire 90 laps into the race, wound up 38th in a patched-up car, and dropped to seventh, a disheartening 184 points out of the lead.

“This pretty much does it for us,” Burton said. “We won’t quit racing, but this makes it -- I won’t say impossible, but pretty close to it.”

Rookie Denny Hamlin, Stewart’s teammate, struggled with his Chevy all race, finish 10th, and dropped to fourth, 80 points back.

After Hamlin sit the all but hopeless now: Kevin Harvick (-105), Jeff Gordon (-157), Burton, Kyle Busch (-233), Mark Martin (-253) and Kahne (-290).

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Ed Hinton covers auto racing for Tribune newspapers.