Stewart pleads not guilty

The 2002 champion pleaded not guilty after running into the back of Kahne on was leading on a restart. It was the third time this season that the pair have made contact. They also clashed at Darlington and Talladega, and Stewart has been at the centre of incidents on the track and off throughout this season. He is currently on probation for attacking Brian Vickers in the pits after the Sonoma race two weeks ago. For that, he was also fined $50,000 and lost 25 points.

"The controversy was pretty uneventful," he said. "His [Kahne's] car wiggled for some reason before I even got to him."

"I don't know if he was shifting or missed a shift or what happened," Stewart continued. "I had already stopped my momentum of catching up, and all the sudden he backed up to us and I ran into the back of him. It was my fault I ran into him, but I don't know why he backed up. When he had the break in momentum, we were right on his rear bumper when it happened."

Although the crowd was generally well-behaved and did not throw anything on the track, it let Stewart know that he was to be considered the bad guy.

"You hear them," Stewart admitted. "It's hard for them to see when there's a concrete wall there, to see when a guy checks up. They're all going to assume they know what happened. I don't know what happened. I was closer than they were, and I still don't know what happened. They're going to form their opinion off what they see, and at that point that's what they saw."

Ray Evernham, owner of Kahne's Dodge Intrepid, had spoken with bitter anger after the incident. "I'd like to have 10 minutes with Tony Stewart and handle it myself," Evernham said. "NASCAR needs to do something before somebody gets hurt."

But Stewart brushed off the remarks: "I'm not even interested in looking at them. We didn't need the accident to win the race. We had the strongest car. I'm sure [Ray's] frustrated. I'm sure his whole team is frustrated, but I'm over that stuff. I don't really care what he said."

Stewart's crew chief Greg Zipadelli was also critical Evernham's Tommy Baldwin after the incident.
"I'm sorry for the guys there and the guys back at the shop that they've got another wrecked race car, he said. "I know how that feels. But I've never gone over and done what those guys did. That's wrong.

"If you go to somebody else's pit box, you probably ought to be thrown out for a week. If you can't talk about it after, can't talk about it civil -- this isn't WWF, we don't fight, punch and kick, or at least that's not what I was told. It should be driver-to-driver, owner-to-owner. If a crew chief has a problem with a crew chief, they should take care of it between them."