Stewart's latest win at the Brickyard stacks up

INDIANAPOLIS -- It wasn't a sloppy swig of milk, the custom for the winner of the Indianapolis 500, but Tony Stewart, from Columbus, Ind., was content to settle for a refreshing drink of water.

With six laps remaining yesterday in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, Stewart casually reached for a water bottle fixed to the dashboard of his No. 20 Home Depot Chevrolet and took a quick sip, operating his racecar with no hands on the steering wheel.

As hard as he worked to wrest control of the lead from Kevin Harvick on Lap 151 of the 160-lap race, and hold off hard-charging runner-up Juan Pablo Montoya and third-place finisher Jeff Gordon, Stewart made winning at his beloved Brickyard for the second time in his career look that easy. "Look ma, no hands!"

The hard part came afterward, when the paunchy 36-year-old tried to celebrate with his Joe Gibbs Racing team by scaling the outside retaining fence near the flag stand. But a tired Stewart could only make it halfway up. Asked why it was hard for him to climb to the top, Stewart became surly with an ESPN pit reporter. "Try it once, you'll see," he said. "You commentators get real good about talking about it."

Then, in dedicating the victory to his hardcore Hoosier constituency among the estimated crowd of 270,000, Stewart, who had been fined $10,000 for skipping a postrace news conference at Phoenix in April, risked being fined and getting docked driver points by NASCAR officials when he blurted out a profanity on national TV. "This one is for everyone in the stands who pull[s] for me and [has] to take all the [expletive] from everyone else," he said.

Stewart remained defiant when asked if he was concerned about catching any heat from NASCAR, especially given the $10,000 fine and 25-point deduction NASCAR hit Dale Earnhardt Jr. with for his use of profanity on TV after a victory at Talladega in October 2004.

"A little late to be concerned about it now, isn't it?" Stewart said as he sat flanked by team president J.D. Gibbs and his crew chief, Greg Zipadelli. Then, pointing to the gleaming silver trophy sitting in front of him on the dais, Stewart added, "Whatever happens; they still can't take this trophy away from me today. Whatever happens, happens."

Nothing was going to ruin the moment.

"It's still like a dream," said Stewart, who was relieved of the burden of winning on his home track when he captured the Brickyard 400 in 2005, which propelled him to his second NASCAR Nextel Cup Series championship.

"I mean, there was so much going on with the first one, but both races were special," Stewart said after earning a $488,111 payday for his 31st career Nextel Cup triumph. "Neither of the wins outweighed the other one. I raced good friend Kasey Kahne for the first win and a very, very close friend [Harvick] for this one. I couldn't think of two guys I'd rather race with for the win here than them."

Stewart, who led seven times for 65 laps, seemed to turn it into a race for second when he wrested the lead from Harvick with 50 laps to go and pulled away to a 5 1/2-second lead over Harvick, a 6.7-second lead over Kyle Busch, and a 10-second lead over Montoya and Gordon before he pitted for the final time on Lap 128 for four tires, fuel, and an air pressure adjustment.

Stewart cycled his way to the front on the next lap and built a 3.5-second lead over Harvick when Earnhardt blew a motor to cause the race's ninth and final caution on Lap 138. Montoya and his crew chief, Donnie Wingo, considered staying out to gain track position if Stewart pitted to top off his tanks.

"He said, 'It's the only shot of winning the race,' " said Montoya, the 2000 Indianapolis 500 winner who failed in his bid to become the first NASCAR driver to win the Indy 500 and Brickyard 400. "I said, 'Yeah, but to be honest, the 20's too fast. Even if he pits, he's still going to come out and beat us.'

"You know, they stayed out," Montoya added. "But, you know, I don't think anybody had anything for Tony today."

On the restart three laps later, Harvick passed Stewart for the lead in Turn 1. Stewart then stalked Harvick, taunting him over the radio by saying, "Here, kitty-kitty-kitty! Come get some of this!" Harvick twice denied Stewart in Turn 3 before finally surrendering to him in the short chute between Turns 1 and 2 with 10 laps to go.

Once he got past Harvick, who faded to seventh, Stewart took a well-deserved water break after he recorded the seventh back-to-back triumph of his career, which came on the heels of a victory two weeks ago at Chicagoland Speedway that snapped a 20-race winless skein. Now he is entering the second half of the season, when historically he has thrived, recording 20 of his triumphs.

"This time of year, it seems like we get hot," said Stewart, who climbed to fifth in the point standings with 2,624. "We've even tried to sit down and figure out what we miss in the spring. But I don't know, I mean, it's the seventh time I guess we've had back-to-back wins. It just seems this time of year, when the tracks get hot and slippery [he does well], and I prayed for a day like today. I wanted it to be hot. I wanted it to be sunny, to where the track would get a little slippery.

"This place gets a little different personality when it gets slick. It does that in the IndyCar race. It does that in the Brickyard [race], too. It seems like when it starts getting slick, that's when we really excel at this place."

Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com.