Stewart’s winning move angers foes
Tony Stewart’s first victory of the year didn’t have much drama. His crew took care of that in the pits.
Stewart ran away with the Tropicana 400 at Joliet, Ill., on Sunday, but the win was marred by a wreck with rookie Kasey Kahne that touched off a fight in the pits between the two teams’ crews and led owner Ray Evernham to call for the 2002 series champion to be suspended.
Stewart dominated the race, leading 160 of 267 laps on the 1 1/2 -mile D-shaped oval. He took the lead for good on lap 241 and beat Nextel Cup points leader Jimmie Johnson by 2.925 seconds.
It was Stewart’s first victory since last October. But in typical Stewart fashion, it was marked by controversy. He even was booed as he got out of his car in victory lane.
Kahne was leading the race with Sterling Marlin second and Stewart third as the field bunched up for the green flag on lap 127. There were several cars not on the lead lap in front of Kahne.
After the restart, Stewart passed Marlin on the outside, but his Chevrolet got too close to Kahne’s Dodge and tapped the back end. Kahne started spinning, sliding headfirst into the wall while Stewart darted out of harm’s way and into the lead.
“Obviously the 20 (car) was in the back of me and put us up in the wall,” Kahne said. “I don’t know why he would do that. He had the car to beat all day. All he had to do was go through a couple more turns and he probably would have passed us.”
But Stewart, who is on probation until Aug. 18 for a previous postrace fight with Brian Vickers, said he didn’t intend any harm.
“I was right on his butt, but all of the sudden he checked up and I don’t know what happened,” Stewart said. “That was a bad deal. We could have gotten taken out just as easily. (Kasey’s) the last guy I’d want to hurt.”
“I hate to have something like that happen. We had such a good car, it wasn’t going to matter anyway. We didn’t need to turn him around to get to victory lane. We were going to win this race no matter what.”
A few seconds after the wreck, Kahne’s crew chief Tommy Baldwin charged into Stewart’s pit. Baldwin and Greg Zipadelli, Stewart’s crew chief, shouted at each other, and then members of the crews began fighting.
“I was just talking to Zippy and telling him his driver is a moron,” Baldwin said. “They started pushing me and then the official grabbed me. I don’t know what happened after that.”
The pit crews mixed it up for a few minutes before order was restored. Stewart has a laundry list of offenses in his six seasons in NASCAR’s top series. He was put on probation for the run-in with Vickers, and NASCAR also fined him $50,000 and docked him 25 championship points.
He’s racked up more than $100,000 in fines over the years, and has been on probation four times.
Champ Car
Sebastien Bourdais avoided trouble in a chaotic race and picked up a victory Sunday in the Toronto Molson Indy, his third Champ Car win in a row.
The 25-year-old Frenchman started from the pole and was virtually assured of his fourth win of the season and taking over the season point lead from Bruno Junqueira when his Newman/Haas Racing teammate crashed on the first turn of the race.
Bourdais was totally in charge throughout the caution-filled race that was ended at just 84 laps — 11 laps early — because of a 1-hour and 45-minute time limit.
After the race, Bourdais listened closely, looking somewhat surprised as runner-up Jimmy Vasser and third-place finisher Patrick Carpentier talked about the wild race that included seven caution flags and plenty of collisions and near misses.
“About the only thing I can say is I’m glad I was out front because it looks like it was real crazy out there,” Bourdais said. “Apparently, I missed a lot of it. I just tried to keep my nose clean and stay focused out there.”
Bourdais’ seventh career victory and fourth in the last five races moved the second-year Champ Car driver to a 28-point (164-136) lead over Junqueira after six of 15 events. Carpentier is third with 129 points and Paul Tracy fourth with 108.
Formula One
Michael Schumacher won for the 10th time in 11 races this season, taking the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, England, to notch his 80th career victory.
Schumacher finished 2.1 seconds ahead of McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen and 3.1 ahead of Ferrari teammate Rubens Barrichello. He is one win away from his own season record of 11 victories set in 2002.
“It’s just unbelievable what’s happening to me and the team this year,” said Schumacher, who won with a time of 1 hour, 24 minutes, 42.700 seconds. His average speed was 135.738 mph.