Talladega 500 race notes

That was when race winner Bobby Hamilton was able to pass him on the outside, lead the last lap and win the race.

"I really didn't think we had that good a car to lead that way at the end, but we did a great job," said Stewart, who trailed Hamilton to the line by 0.163 seconds. "Kurt Busch was really helping out a bunch, giving us some pushes down the straightaways. I kept looking in the mirror to try to see who was getting to the outside. The only guy that was getting bigger in my mirror was the '55' car (Hamilton). He just did a great job. We needed the race to end about two laps earlier."

By coming from seventh in the field and leading twice for a total of 26 laps en route to his second-place finish, Stewart vaulted from 12th to ninth in the championship point standings. It was his third top-10 finish this season and his third top-10 in five races at Talladega.

"This is definitely what we needed," said Stewart. "We were up front at first, but then we got shuffled to the back. I was like, 'Alright, I'm going all the way to the back and I'm going to ride for a while.' I learned a lot of things that I needed to learn to try to get back up there at the end. It was nice for us to be able to do that, and hopefully we'll have some more of that as the season rolls on."



Bobby Labonte finished fifth for only his second top-five finish of the season. His best finish this year came at Rockingham, North Carolina in the second race of the season.

"I got a little bit to the outside there," Labonte said. "I got a move and Kevin Harvick pushed me a lot. I got back down to the middle groove and got a little bit of a run there and then got back on the outside and Kevin pushed me some more. We did come from a long ways back, but right there at the end,
you just try to hug the guys down low and get as much air as you can and sniff it out, as much as possible. All the guys on this Interstate Batteries Pontiac did a good job today. We just couldn't quite get up there to the front, but that is quite all right.

"I thought there were a lot of close calls, but everybody did a good job today. Everybody tried to stay as patient as possible. There at the end it got a little wild, but then again, it's supposed to get wild there at the end."



Rookie Kurt Busch finished third behind race winner Bobby Hamilton and Tony Stewart for the best finish of his career.

"The race went faster than a quarter at Las Vegas," said the 22-year-old driver. "I'm very happy with everything and the way the team has come together with Ben Leslie as the new crew chief and just all the testing that we've done. To come here with a brand new race car and never tested it before and never even saw this place until Friday morning when I went to go do my first qualifying run. It was just a great weekend that Jack Roush (team owner) put together with horsepower. The aero package - just a wonderful weekend. I'm glad Sharpie/Rubbermaid is on board and we can showcase somebody out there."

Roush, who also owns the cars raced by Mark Martin, Jeff Burton and Matt Kenseth, sees tremendous progress by his rookie driver.

"Benny Parsons is out probably out there somewhere watching," Roush said. "We talked about what we might do and we both agreed that Kurt coming in directly from one year in the Truck Series into the Winston Cup Series was probably the craziest thing we could do this year, but we felt the need for speed. Well, there's Kurt. He's incredibly mature. They asked him how he was doing about 100 laps riding around there in all those cars and he said he was riding around with the top down.

"He was just chillin' out."



Sterling Marlin led 51 laps - the most of any driver in the race - but he finished 23rd after getting shuffled back at the end.

"I got shoved back, and if there were two lines or three lines you never could get a run," Marlin said. "It's pretty ridiculous racing. You can't pass and the way the cars handle don't make any difference. It's stupid racing. They've got to do something to fix it. If you ever got back and they got three deep, you couldn't go anywhere. They had you all boxed up.

"It got pretty wild the last 30 laps. We had a good car, but we just got boxed in the back. There was nothing else we could do. It's pretty ridiculous racing. It's crazy. It's like you're riding down the interstate and you've got four slow drivers in four lanes and they're all in front of you and you can't go anywhere. It's a pretty rough deal."

Marlin's solution to the problem?

"Take the damn plates off," he said.