Stewart takes dominant Indy win

"Smoke", as he is know by his fans, scored maximum points by winning the race and leading the most laps. He overtook Kevin Harvick with nine laps to go, and then pulled away to get his second victory at his home track.

"Oh, man, this one I'm going to remember a lot more of it for sure afterwards," Stewart said. "But no, it's still like a dream. We had the fastest car today. It was consistent all day long. The guys had great pitstops. It was just like Chicago except on the restarts we were really vulnerable."

In fact, Harvick overtook Stewart on the last restart with 20 laps remaining and seemed to be able to open a gap for a while, but in a matter of laps the No. 20 Home Depot car was all over the RCR driver.

Despite Harvick changing his line to try to force Stewart to take a different groove to pass him, he was unable to keep the Gibbs' driver behind for too long.

Stewart dived in on the inside of Harvick into Turn 1, but it was only until the end of the lap that he would be able to get by him after having some contact.

"Kevin got really smart and changed how he was driving Turn 2 and got to where I wasn't getting as big a run as I was before. I had to do something different," Stewart added.

"I tried to go hard with him once and see what happened, and I got up to him and he got tight, I guess, in [Turn] 1. We got underneath him.

"I just squeezed him a little bit, not on purpose, but I got too close to him I guess, ran into him in the short chute. It was really cool, almost like a slide job counter-move, him getting back underneath me. It was a drag race down the backstretch."

After Stewart crossed the line he got a tap from behind by Harvick, who slid down the order in the final laps finishing seventh. Apparently he wasn't very happy with Stewart's move.

"It was just good racing until I got the left front fender caved in," said an upset Harvick, who was summoned by NASCAR officials following the race for his contact with Stewart on the cool-down lap. "He (Stewart) didn't quite give us enough room."

Behind all that was Juan Pablo Montoya who enjoyed his best oval race of the year thus far. He ran in the top five for most of the day and was the man to watch in the closing laps as he overtook Jeff Gordon for third and then Harvick for second with 3 laps remaining. He felt however like he had nothing to do against Stewart.

"It was a lot of fun," Montoya said. "We played it smart. Had a good race at the end. Second here in the Brickyard is just awesome. I don't think anyone had anything for Tony. His car was way too fast. We're getting closer; we're there already. We just need to be the fastest car like Tony today."

Jeff Gordon finished third to score his 17th top-ten result in 20 races and further increased his lead in the points.

But as productive as his day was, it was damaging for his teammate and defending champion Jimmie Johnson who was involved in two incidents, the final one ending his race in flames after a puncture on his left front tyre sent him straight into the Turn 3 SAFER barrier on lap 61.

 "We didn't want to finish up that way, by any means, but unfortunately some aggressive racing was taking place," Johnson said.

"The 11 got into the 17 and we all got piled up and I got the car torn up initially there. Then we were just trying to get back on the lead lap and the tyre blew up again going into Turn 3. It's been a steady roll of bad races for us."

The first incident in which Johnson got involved was the 'big one' of the day. Eight cars wrecked into Turn 1 in the fourth of six incidents that took place in the first 70 laps. After that, only three more caution flags came out for debris and oil on track.

The latter one came out for Dale Earnhardt Jr, who had many fans on their feet in the first part of the race, leading form lap 2 until lap 20, and then again for another 13 laps. However his hopes of emulating his father at the Brickyard went up in smoke when he was hit by engine problems with 23 laps remaining, while running fifth.

Despite not finishing, he remains 12th in the points, which means he is still 'in the bubble' in terms of the Chase for the Nextel Cup. Tony Stewart was the biggest winner in the points moving up to fifth, while Jimmie Johnson moved down two positions to ninth.

Jeff Gordon has extended his lead to 371 points to Denny Hamlin and 377 to Matt Kenseth who finished the day in tenth.

Pos  Driver              Make        Laps
 1.  Tony Stewart        Chevrolet   160
 2.  Juan Montoya        Dodge       160
 3.  Jeff Gordon         Chevrolet   160
 4.  Kyle Busch          Chevrolet   160
 5.  Reed Sorenson       Dodge       160
 6.  Mark Martin         Chevrolet   160
 7.  Kevin Harvick       Chevrolet   160
 8.  Jeff Burton         Chevrolet   160
 9.  Dave Blaney         Toyota      160
10.  Matt Kenseth        Ford        160
11.  Kurt Busch          Dodge       160
12.  Martin Truex Jr     Chevrolet   160
13.  Clint Bowyer        Chevrolet   160
14.  Ward Burton         Chevrolet   160
15.  Greg Biffle         Ford        160
16.  David Ragan         Ford        160
17.  David Gilliland     Ford        160
18.  Carl Edwards        Ford        160
19.  Bobby Labonte       Dodge       160
20.  Paul Menard         Chevrolet   160
21.  Brian Vickers       Toyota      160
22.  Denny Hamlin        Chevrolet   159
23.  Bill Elliott        Ford        159
24.  Ricky Rudd          Ford        159
25.  Ken Schrader        Dodge       159
26.  David Stremme       Dodge       158
27.  Robby Gordon        Ford        157
28.  Elliott Sadler      Dodge       155
29.  Scott Riggs         Dodge       154
30.  Terry Labonte       Toyota      150
31.  Scott Wimmer        Chevrolet   145
32.  Kyle Petty          Dodge       141
33.  Jamie McMurray      Ford        138
34.  Dale Earnhardt Jr   Chevrolet   136
35.  Casey Mears         Chevrolet   132
36.  JJ Yeley            Chevrolet   120
37.  Johnny Sauter       Chevrolet   100
38.  David Reutimann     Toyota       92
39.  Jimmie Johnson      Chevrolet    60
40.  Kasey Kahne         Dodge        39
41.  Tony Raines         Chevrolet    39
42.  Ryan Newman         Dodge        20
43.  Jeff Green          Chevrolet    13