Hoosier feels at home on bricks

INDIANAPOLIS -- The residents of Columbus, Ind., might write-in a presidential vote in 2008, to none other than 2005 Allstate 400 at the Brickyard Champion Tony Stewart. Nicknamed the "Columbus Comet" because of his Northern Indiana roots, Stewart told the media days before the race he would give up his 2002 NASCAR crown to win the hallowed opportunity to kiss the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's famed brick finish line a champion.\nStewart's 2002 championship aside, the former IndyCar Champion climbed the fence like Spiderman to flex his muscles to the jubilant crowd, who chanted "Tony, Tony, Tony" before the gladiator climbed from his winning stock car. Having qualified a dismal 22 out of the 43 car field, Stewart climbed into the top 10 by lap 60 and he led 44 of the last 60 laps to win by 0.794 seconds after 400 miles raced.\n"Thank God for restarts," Stewart said. "I wish I could put it in words. I've wanted this my entire life."\nTen years after the late-great Dale Earnhardt Sr. won the Brickyard 400 in 1995, his son's No. 8 Budweiser Chevrolet suffered utter defeat Sunday in his bid for the Nextel Cup Championship chase after crashing during a lap 62 restart. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was bumped from behind after the single file line of cars slingshotted forward before slowing down like an accordion. \n"I got turned into the wall. I don't know. My spotter said the leader checked on the restart, but I don't know. I didn't see anything," he said. " ...That's life. You've got to deal with it, good and bad. We'll be alright. I mean, if we make the Chase we make it. If we don't we don't. We'll still try to win some races before the year is out."\nEarnhardt is 627 points behind the NASCAR points leader after Sunday's race. He slipped to 16th in the points standing and he is 227 points away from eligibility into the "Chase for the Championship."\nJimmie Johnson, the points leader going into the Allstate 400, took more than a hit in the points standing. His head took a hit when his car collided with a section of the speedway's soft wall on lap 143 after blowing a front right tire.\n"Man that was hard. That's by far, I think, the hardest hit I've taken," Johnson said. "I don't really remember coming from Turn four to the pits. I just remember kind of waking up on pit road and the guys were there pulling me out of the car."\nJohnson's number 48 Lowe's Home Improvement Chevrolet burst into flames after the stock car gladiator parked the machine in his pit box. He was taken to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis for further evaluation after the race.\nStewart's victory was his fourth in the last seven NASCAR competitions and his Brickyard win, coupled win Johnson's fiery troubles, propelled the former NASCAR champion into first place in the NEXTEL Cup points race with five events left before the 10 race stock car playoff "Chase for the Championship." Stewart leads Johnson by 75 points after the flip-flop.\nStewart's summertime NASCAR dominance includes six straight top-10 finishes. Four-time Brickyard champion and four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon finished in the top-10 to keep his "Chase for the Championship" hopes alive. After an early-race cruise that kept him within the top five, Gordon slipped from the top-20 by lap 60 and he fought through traffic, near collisions and bump-happy drivers to help lift the spirit of his race team that has suffered through several busted cars and point chase bruises.\n"There was a lot of stuff going on. We avoided most of it. Unfortunately there at the end, I couldn't avoid Mike Bliss. It sent us to the back. We had to fix the left front fender," Gordon said. "We had a great car. We really did. We got it really good the second half of the race, but the whole time we were playing catch-up. I'm proud of Tony and that team ... I know this one means a lot to him."\nIn front of hundreds of thousands of applauding fans, Pam Boas, Tony Stewart's mother, said she ran up to him after he won the race and jumped into his arms.\n"That was a dream. You knew some day that would happen. It means everything in this world to him," she said. "Indiana is home to Tony. That's where he has come back to. Any time he had an opportunity, he would come back home"