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Written by Robert Trammell
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Monday, 06 October 2008 08:31 |
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Tony Stewart finally broke into the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series win column at Talladega Superspeedway Sunday afternoon taking the checkered flag in a wild AMP Energy 500.
Stewart had finished second six times in his Talladega Cup career until Sunday when he actually crossed the finish line second but was awarded the victory.
Regan Smith was ahead of Stewart when the checkered flag flew but NASCAR ruled he passed Stewart below the yellow out of bounds line and declared the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing driver the winner.
Smith, who led a strong charge by the DEI team, didn't agree with NASCAR's ruling which denied him his first career Sprint Cup Series victory.
Smith's DEI teammate Paul Menard finished second for his first career top five.
David Ragan, Jeff Burton and Clint Bowyer rounded out the top five.
The finish capped off a wild day at Talladega that included some incredible racing and passing as well as a number of incidents that turned the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship upside down.
In fact, the 28 lap leaders in the AMP Energy 500 sets the all-time NASCAR Sprint Cup record for different leaders in a race.
The second of the day's two big accidents involved ten cars including Chase contenders Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Matt Kenseth, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch.
Edwards tried to bump draft teammate Biffle as the field raced through turns three and four with 16 laps to go and when the No. 16 spun, it set off a chain reaction crash.
The day's other pile-up came on lap 68 when Brian Vickers blew a tire as the field raced through the tri-oval. Vickers went hard into Martin Truex, Jr. who took about five hits before finally coming to rest on the inside retaining wall with several other leaders also involved.
The race was red-flagged for 17 minutes to clean up the debris.
Jeff Gordon was involved in an earlier incident that saw the No. 24 DuPont Chevy make hard impact with the backstretch wall after making contact with David Reutimann.
And Denny Hamlin was taken to a local hospital for observation after a tire failure sent him hard into the wall while fighting for the lead.
Somehow Jimmie Johnson, who had trouble early in the race and lost a lap, was able to avoid the carnage and escaped Talladega actually increasing his series point lead to 72 over Edwards with Biffle now 77 behind.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series now heads to Lowe's Motor Speedway for next Saturday night's Bank of America 500.
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