NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
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CUP: Stewart Wins Race, Championship
Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards tie at top of points; Stewart wins tiebreaker for title…
Mike Hembree  |  Posted November 20, 2011   Homestead, FL
Tony Stewart ran the race of his life, driving with reckless abandon on restarts and rallying twice from deep in the pack to win the Ford 400 and the Sprint Cup championship on a wild and wet Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Stewart won the race with some of the boldest driving of his career, outrunning championship challenger Carl Edwards, who finished second. The two finished in a points tie at the top of the standings, but Stewart won the championship based on the first tiebreaker – race victories. Stewart had five – all in the Chase, while Edwards won only one.

It was the first time in the history of NASCAR that two drivers finished the season tied for first place in the point standings.

Edwards chased Stewart from about a second down over the final 30 laps but couldn’t make up the deficit to make a serious challenge for the lead and the win. Stewart won by 1.30 seconds.

“That’s as hard as I can drive,” said Edwards, who was among the first in a long line of people to congratulate Stewart after the race. “I’m going to try to keep my head up and go again next year.”

The championship, Stewart’s third, ended Jimmie Johnson’s five-year reign atop the NASCAR world.

Kevin Harvick finished third in the points, 58 behind the two leaders. Following were Matt Kenseth, Brad Keselowski, Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, Denny Hamlin and Ryan Newman in the top 10. The top 10 drivers will be honored in two weeks at the season-ending awards banquet in Las Vegas.

The two Chase drivers who didn’t finish in the top 10 were brothers Kurt (11th) and Kyle (12th) Busch. Ironically, the Busches are natives of Las Vegas.

Stewart’s team had problems Sunday on two pit stops, and Stewart raced relentlessly from the back of the pack twice after his car’s front grille was damaged early in the race, requiring extensive pit work.

Stewart told his team via radio during the race that he had passed “85 cars,” and that seemed close to the truth at that point. After the race, NASCAR said he made 118 passes during the event.

Stewart ran like a man on a desperate mission, clipping off positions from the back as Edwards ran in or near the front.

Edwards led 119 of the race’s 267 laps, easily the most of the day. Stewart led 65, including the final 36.

The green flew with 37 laps to go to end a 17-lap caution period for rain with Stewart third on four fresh tires and Edwards fifth on two new tires.

Stewart had conserved fuel prior to the caution, attempting to run the rest of the race with one remaining pit stop.

Stewart passed Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski on the first lap of green to take the lead for good. Edwards moved to second four laps later and chased Stewart the rest of the way.

Stewart showed the strength of his car and his determination on a restart on lap 147, moving past six cars to move from ninth to third in two laps and making a four-wide pass in the process.

A rain shower forced a halt to the race after 109 laps with Edwards sitting in first place. The race resumed after a red flag of one hour and 14 minutes, and Stewart quickly sprinted into the lead. He made the same sort of bold moves repeatedly on restarts in wild traffic.

Edwards, seeking his first championship, dominated the opening segment of the race. As the red flag flew for rain, he led Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr. and Stewart.

Stewart ran into an unexpected challenge early in the race when debris punched a hole near the middle of his car’s grille. Kurt Busch lost pieces of his car’s transmission seconds before Stewart’s problem, causing speculation that Stewart’s car might have been damaged by that debris.

The Stewart-Haas Racing team repaired the damage in a pair of pit stops during a caution for a brief rain shower.

Stewart dropped to 40th because of the problem but zipped through the field to 25th. On the next caution, the team made more repairs, pushing Stewart to 38th.

By lap 93, as Edwards led, Stewart had advanced to seventh. He later moved into the top five.

“After the way those first 109 laps went today, I could not be more proud,” Stewart said. “We had the problem early and had the hole in the nose. Everybody on this Office Depot-Mobil 1 Chevy team did a great job of getting it back going.

“I told them, ‘Man, it is really going to make these guys mad when we come back twice and still kick their butt.’ ”

Following Stewart and Edwards at the race finish were Truex Jr., Kenseth and Gordon.

With that run, Gordon jumped three positions in the final point standings to eighth. Johnson, sixth, finished outside the top five in points for the first time in his career.

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 29 years. He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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