NASCAR: NSCS -- Fontana: Pepsi Max 400 Results

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Tony Stewart earned his first career victory at Auto Club Speedway, winning Sunday's Pepsi Max 400.  Jimmie Johnson began pulling away from the rest of the Chase field in the quest for his fifth straight championship.

Stewart's championship hopes were on life support after the first two Chase races.  After four, he suddenly finds himself back in contention again.  He was buried back in the field throughout the first half of the race, but his crew made the right adjustments and the car came to life in the second half.  It was Stewart's second win of the season and the 39th of his career, putting him in a 17th-place tie with Tim Flock on the all-time wins list.

The race turned on a debris caution on Lap 183 (of 200).  Paul Menard and Regan Smith took two tires and led the field to green on the restart with 13 to go.  Stewart got by Smith a lap later to take the lead, but another caution soon flew when David Ragan slid up the track and pinched Kurt Busch into the wall.  That set up a two-lap shootout and Stewart and Johnson led the field to green.  Stewart took the high line and got a good push from Clint Bowyer to keep him ahead of Johnson.  Bowyer and Johnson battled side-by-side through the final lap for second as Stewart pulled away to win by 0.466 seconds.

Bowyer won the battle and nipped Johnson at the line for second.  Kasey Kahne was fourth.  Ryan Newman was fifth.  (Race results)

After the race, Bowyer seemed disappointed with a second-place finish.  He blasted NASCAR for the debris caution, claiming that he would have won easily if the race had stayed green.

Kevin Harvick, Denny Hamlin and Jeff Gordon finished seventh, eighth, and ninth respectively to keep Johnson in sight in the championship hunt, but it wasn't easy for any of them.  Harvick and Gordon overcame pit road speeding penalties.  Hamlin had to start the race in the rear of the field after his crew changed his transmission after qualifying.

The rest of the Chase contenders had terrible days.  After his run-in with Ragan, Kurt Busch limped home in 21st place.  That was two spots ahead of Jeff Burton, who ran yet another lackluster race.  Kyle Busch's engine blew on Lap 155; he finished 35th.

After all their past success at Fontana, it was surprising to see the whole Roush Fenway Racing organization's title hopes go up in smoke.  Greg Biffle's engine blew just 40 laps in, giving him a 41st-place finish.  Just a few laps later, Carl Edwards lost power and had to be pushed to the garage.  The trouble was finally traced to a distributor problem and he returned to the track to finish 34th.  Matt Kenseth also had engine problems.  His car was smoking badly at the end, but he nursed it home to finish 30th.

Johnson now leads Hamlin by 36 in the points standings.  Harvick (-54) and Gordon (-85) are the only other drivers within 100 points of the four-time champion.  With his win and the other Chasers' misfortunes, Stewart climbed five spots in the standings to fifth.  He is now 107 points back with six races remaining.  Kurt Busch (-140), Edwards (-162), Burton (-177), Kyle Busch (-187), Biffle (-215), Kenseth (-241) and Bowyer (-247) round out the Chase field.

NASCAR: NNS -- Fontana: CampingWorld.com 300 Results

Image via WikipediaMake it an even dozen for Kyle Busch.  He picked up the victory Saturday in the Nationwide Series race at Fontana to extend the record he set last weekend for most series wins in a season to twelve.

Busch battled hard to keep the lead on the final restart then gradually pulled away from the field to win the CampingWorld.com 300, crossing the finish line 1.034 seconds ahead of Brad Keselowski.  Kevin Harvick was third, followed by Carl Edwards and Joey Logano.  (Race results)

It was Busch's fourth victory at the two-mile track and the 42nd of his career.  He is now just six wins behind Mark Martin for the Nationwide Series career win record.

Busch overcame a pit road speeding penalty on Lap 87 (of 150).  That dropped him back to 15th, but he worked his way through the field and was back in the lead on Lap 112.  This was Busch's third victory of the season after a speeding penalty.

Harvick, who led a race-high 86 laps, had a better car than Busch on the long runs, but was frustrated by slow pit stops that cost him positions.  He came into the pits with the lead on Lap 134 (of 150) but came out sixth.  Two cautions in the final 17 laps kept him from challenging Busch for the win.

Danica Patrick, starting her eighth Nationwide race and her second at Fontana, was having her best run of the season until misfortune struck again.  Just after a restart with the field still tightly packed, Patrick was running 17th, looking for her first Top 15 finish and her first lead lap finish.  She got too close to James Buescher and squeezed him into the wall.  A lap later she got close to Buescher again and he turned into her rear, turning her into the wall.  Ricky Carmichael and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. also got caught up in the incident that brought out the sixth and final caution and set up the five-lap dash to the finish.  Patrick would finish 30th.

Keselowski should start clearing out a space in his trophy case.  He now leads Edwards by 384 points in the series standings with just five races to go.

NASCAR: Fontana Preview

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This week's NASCAR action takes place in Fontana, California, at Auto Club Speedway.  There are two races on tap:  Saturday's Nationwide race, the CampingWorld.com 300 (4 p.m. ET, ESPN2) and Sunday's Sprint Cup race, the Pepsi Max 400 (3 p.m. ET, ESPN).  The Camping World Truck Series is taking yet another weekend off; they return on October 23 at Martinsville.

Sunday's Cup race is the fourth race in the ten-race Chase for the Sprint Cup.   Jimmie Johnson took over the lead in the points standings after last weekend's race at Kansas, but Denny Hamlin is just eight points behind and seven drivers are within 85 points of the four-time champ.  Jeff Burton, in ninth place, is just 101 points back.  Tony Stewart (-127) and Matt Kenseth (-149) still have faint glimmers of hope.

Clint Bowyer (-252) is just counting the days until the 2011 season after losing his final appeal of his 150-point penalty after his car failed inspection at the NASCAR R&D Center after he won the first Chase race at Loudon.  NASCAR chief appellate officer John Middlebrook did reduce the fines and suspensions for the No. 33 team though.  Crew chief Shane Wilson's fine was reduced from $150,000 to $100,000 and the suspensions of Wilson and car chief Chad Haney were lowered from six races to four.  Richard Childress Racing competition director Scott Miller will be on the pit box for Wilson beginning this weekend.

The bad news for all the drivers chasing Johnson is that Auto Club Speedway is one of his best tracks.  He leads all drivers with five wins.  Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth, both in the Chase, are the only other drivers with multiple wins at the track; they each have three.  Johnson is the only driver to win back-to-back races at Fontana; he won earlier in the year in February and last year's October race.

Hendrick Motorsports (nine wins) and Roush Fenway Racing (seven) have won 16 of the 20 Cup races at Fontana.  Auto Club Speedway is the only current track where Joe Gibbs Racing does not have a victory.

Jamie McMurray grabbed the pole for Sunday's race in the Friday qualifying session.  McMurray ran a lap in 38.859 seconds (185.285 mph).  It was his fourth pole of the season and the seven of his career.  Elliott Sadler grabbed the other front-row starting spot with a lap of 184.407 mph.  Kenseth starts third, the only Chaser in the top five.  Juan Montoya starts fourth, Kasey Kahne fifth.

Only two other Chasers start in the top ten -- Greg Biffle starts seventh and Johnson eighth.  Bowyer starts 13th, Jeff Burton 15th, Kyle Busch 16th, Gordon 17th, Carl Edwards 20th, Kevin Harvick 21st, Tony Stewart 22nd, Hamlin 34th, and Kurt Busch 38th.

Bobby Labonte claimed the final starting spot by using a past champion's provisional.  Mike Bliss and Patrick Carpentier failed to qualify for the 43-car field.  (Race lineup)

Auto Club Speedway is very similar to Kansas Speedway, site of last week's race.  Both are wide, multi-groove tracks with moderate banking.  Where Kansas was a 1.5-mile tri-oval, ACS is a 2-mile D-shaped oval.  Auto Club Speedway's layout is almost identical to Michigan International Speedway.  There should be a lot of side-by-side racing, but the field might get strung out as the faster cars leave the slower ones behind.  The engines run in the high rpm range all day and one or two usually don't make it out alive.  This year, in an effort to make the race more competitive, NASCAR reduced the race from 500 to 400 miles.

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