Stewart ends Martinsville frustration

MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Tony Stewart once got so frustrated with trying to go fast around Martinsville Speedway that he suggested it be turned into a bass fishing pond.

He would never allow it now.

Stewart won a paint-trading duel with Jimmie Johnson and overcame Hendrick Motorsports’ frustrating dominance of NASCAR’s smallest and trickiest track Sunday.

It was Stewart’s second victory at Martinsville, where he led 530 of 1,000 laps a season ago without winning either race.

“The racing here has been awesome since they’ve done everything,” he said, speaking of resurfacing and other improvements. “They could still fill it up once a year with water, we could put dirt on it once a year. Just let us still run two Cup races.”

The race had all the typical beating and banging of a short track event, but ended with none of the top contenders feeling they’d been wronged like last week in Bristol.

Stewart and Johnson dueled nose-to-bumper and side-by-side for four laps beginning with 30 to go, bringing the 65,000 fans to their feet. After being rebuffed three times, Stewart finally banged his way around Johnson with 27 laps to go.

“I knew we were a little quicker than him,” Stewart said. “There was no way he was going to give it away, so we were going to have to take it away. We didn’t turn him around. We didn’t spin him out. We just got the position that we were after.”

Johnson said it’s easy for the one who prevailed to pass off the contact as typical short-track racing, but he had no complaints about being nudged.

“I just kind of used up my stuff there at the end,” Johnson said.

The defending series champion celebrated his 25th victory in what is becoming his trademark, climbing the fence near the flag stand as his fans joined in from the other side.

“I’m still too old and still too fat, but as long as those people keep cheering like they do when I get up there, I’m going to keep doing it for them,” he said.