Montoya blames Stewart for clash

On lap 240 Montoya was trying to overtake Stewart for eighth place on the inside of Turn 4. Out of the previous corner, Stewart had forced Montoya to move to the inside in order to force the Colombian to make a slower entry into the next corner.

As they went into Turn 4, the rear of Montoya's car moved and then started to move up the track until making contact with the No. 20 car of Stewart.

"You can ask any driver, when you go low and the other guy just pins you down you lose some of the side grip in the car and you're going to get loose," Montoya stated after the race.

"He was going in high enough that I couldn't run high but low enough to really get me loose.

"I understand we're racing and I'm okay with it. But if he does that, it's going to get to a point if I want to pass him I'm going to go in a little deeper to make sure that I run a little bit harder."

Montoya had already battled with Stewart a couple of times before the incident happened, but despite racing each other hard, there had been no contact until now. The Colombian believes however that Stewart then got too aggressive with him.

"I haven't seen [the video] but we just touched a little bit in the middle of the corner. I got really loose on the brakes going in and I just went into him a little bit. Before that we were racing pretty clean.

"I think generally the way it works here is somebody gets a run beside you and you try to run a little higher to make sure you give the guy enough air and you give him room.

"Otherwise it's the other way around. I think if you race like that, people will still race you clean. He did that before. I don't know why he was so aggressive. We still had like 100 laps to go."

While Montoya was able to carry on after the incident, Stewart was hit by Jimmie Johnson and then had a further spin, which caused a crash between Dale Earnhardt Jr and Kyle Busch.

Stewart eventually finished 25th, two laps down on race winner Jeff Burton while Montoya finished eighth and moved up to 13th in the driver standings.