Burton wins from 38th place

Burton was in second place when then-leader Tony Stewart started steering his Home Depot Pontiac back and forth in an effort to keep the nearly fuel-starved engine running to no avail.

Burton crossed the line 1.347 seconds ahead of Kenny Wallace, who enjoyed his best-ever Series finish.

Stewart, who led over 100 laps, had to pull it down pit road and needed a push to get the car back on track.

On the last lap, Stewart and Ernie Irvan, who was a lap down, tangled and Stewart finished 10th.

'I guess he [Stewart] was mad at me or something, I don't know,' said a puzzled Irvan.

'He hit me in turn two. He hit me in the back and hit me in the right side, so I went ahead and hit him, too. I guess that since he ran out of gas he was mad at me.

'Tony's all right. I'd be pretty upset, too. He was going to have his first Winston Cup win and it didn't happen. It's just part of it.'

Greg Zipadelli admitted the team failed to look at the 'big picture' in the quest for a first time win for Rookie Stewart.

'We knew it was probably going to be a half-a-lap gamble. It showed up to be bigger than that,' said Zipadellli.

'We thought we were conserving more fuel throughout the whole run than we had previously. If we did, and were getting the same fuel mileage we did earlier, we should have made it.

Another Roush Racing driver who had a good day was Mark Martin. Forced to take a provisional for the first time since last August at New Hampshire, he was also hampered by a cast on his left wrist, still sore ribs and a screw in his leg from injuries suffered during final practice for the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway last weekend.

Martin finished sixth after safely escaping at least two major incidents in the early going.

John Andretti also ran out of fuel, just before Stewart, after running at the front for most of the afternoon.

'I'm real proud of my team. They did a great job,' said Andretti.

'They gave me a really good race car. The last set of tyres we just couldn't hook up on. That was the worst we were all day. We weren't going to have a great finish but we were going to have a decent finish.

'We tried to go all the way and we ran out of fuel. That's the way it goes. The motor shut off right as the fuel went into the car.

Stewart's team-mate, Bobby Labonte, finished a disappointing 38th after starting in the third spot.

'I was racing real hard with some lapped cars there. I got into three awfully hard and I got together with somebody over there,' said Labonte.

'That's the way it goes. That's racing here at Loudon. We were racing kind of hard going into turn three, I reckon. I got down on the inside of a lapped car and I got in there real hard.'

Following Burton and Wallace were Jeff Gordon, Dale Jarrett, Bill Elliott,Martin, Wally Dallenbach, Dale Earnhardt, Jimmy Spencer and Stewart rounding off the top-10.