Stewart has fiery ending in Samsung/Radio Shack 500

Tony Stewart made a fiery exit Sunday in Fort Worth, Texas.

With 37 laps left in the NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Texas, something broke on Stewart’s car, creating a fireball from underneath. Once the car rolled to a stop on the backstretch, Stewart scrambled out quickly.

He was treated at the infield medical center and released.

“Tony has some first-degree burns,” Joe Gibbs Racing spokesman Mike Arning said. “There is a small burn on the lower back of his right thigh that’s about the size of a fist. The other area is on his right elbow about the size of the one on his thigh, and it’s more like a bad sunburn.

“Both are minor burns, which he’ll treat on his own in the coming days.”

After leading the Samsung/RadioShack 500 twice for 45 laps, Stewart finished 31st.

Greg Biffle, however, charged from the rear of the field for a convincing victory – 20 car lenghths – over runnerup Jamie McMurray.

Biffle, leading 219 of 334 laps on the 1 1/2 -mile oval, grabbed his second Nextel Cup victory of the season and the fifth of his career.

“The car was really loose out there with that short (rear) spoiler that NASCAR has us using, but I like having a loose race,” Biffle said. “It works in my favor.”

Things didn’t start out very well at the Texas track for the former NASCAR Busch Series and truck champion, who crashed Friday in practice and was forced to switch to a backup car. That meant he had to start from the rear of the field.

He picked off cars two and three at a time early in the race, moving all the way to 15th by lap 26, slipping into the top a few laps later. He took the lead for the first time on lap 87.

Busch Disqualification

Johnny Sauter drove both races this weekend in Texas, but the record book won’t show his participation Saturday in the Busch Series race.

NASCAR on Sunday took the unusual step of disqualifying the No. 1 car driven by Sauter in the Busch O’Reilly 300. He finished 14th, but an illegal carburetor was discovered during a postrace inspection of the car owned by James Finch.

“It falls in the category of blatant,” NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter said. “It’s just like the No. 1 car never raced (Saturday) … no points, no money. It’s a total disqualification.”

Hunter said Sauter’s car was picked at random for inspection, and that more penalties were possible. That could include suspensions and/or fines.

Sauter was 41st Sunday.

NHRA

Larry Dixon gave team owner Don “The Snake” Prudhomme his 100th career victory at Las Vegas, beating Doug Kalitta in the NHRA SummitRacing.com Nationals.

Dixon raced to his 36th career Top Fuel victory with a quarter-mile run of 4.59 seconds at a top speed of 326 mph. Kalitta finished in 4.64 seconds at 319 mph.

“One hundred is great, it’s wonderful, but it’s not like we’re going to retire,” said Prudhomme, who has 49 NHRA victories as a driver and 51 as a team owner.

Grand Prix

JJ Lehto and Marco Werner won the Grand Prix of Atlanta in Braselton, Ga., in another record-setting day in the American Le Mans Series.

Lehto posted his 22nd career class victory, tying Sascha Maassen for the ALMS all-time record. Lehto and Werner turned a close race at the two-hour mark into a comfortable victory in their No. 1 Champion Racing Audi R8. Andy Wallace and Chris Dyson finished second in their No. 20 Dyson Racing Lola, 44.7 seconds behind.