Stewart savors fifth at Kentucky, cementing spot inside Top 30

Stewart was one of a handful of drivers who elected to stretch their fuel to make it to the finish, rather than stop for a splash of gas.

The strategy worked as he ended up fifth for his second top-five finish in the 10 races since his return from a preseason back injury.

The fifth-place finish keeps Stewart 30th in the driver standings, where he was to start the race, but he now owns a 31-point cushion over 31st-place Brian Scott.

If he remains in the Top 30, he can use his win last month at Sonoma, Calif., to qualify for the championship Chase. The three-time series champion is in his final season of fulltime competition in the Cup series.

“It was really hard to figure out what to do, but just had to try to keep it stable to where you could race. It’s really nobody’s fault,” Stewart said after the race. “I mean Goodyear is trying to do what they can to protect themselves and make sure they don’t have tire problems.

“They didn’t have to worry about that. It was the hardest thing on the planet. NHL doesn’t have anything on them on a hard puck. Like every other repave, as they get laps and more races on this track it will get to where they can come off the hardness of the tire and it will be better for everybody.”

Stewart said he spent much of the first half of the race in “survival mode,” for fear of racing too hard and jeopardizing finishing the race which would prevent him from capitalizing on the misfortune of those around him in the points standings.

“You are not really going to race anywhere else the rest of the year like this (because of the recent repave), so I don’t think it’s an indication of what our season is going to be like, but we ran anywhere from 11th to 22nd, pretty much just stayed in that range all day,” he said.

“It was just really tricky on restarts of being able to stay around cars. Kasey Kahne drove around me on the outside once and I about wrecked. It chattered the right-rear and all he did was just drive around me just like Pocono. It’s kind of hard when you have conditions like that.”

Kentucky and Darlington (S.C.) Raceway are the only tracks on the current Cup series schedule where Stewart hasn’t won a series race during his career.