Tony Stewart finishes sixth at NASCAR Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway

November 9, 12:18 PMStewart-Haas Racing ExaminerRosalie Thompson

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Tony Stewart and Stewart-Haas Racing teammate
Ryan Newman talk at Texas Motor Speedway
AP Photo Roger Lauer

Tony Stewart ran in the top 10 most of the day at Sunday's Dickies 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.  He finished the day in sixth place, his 23rd top-10 finish of 2009.  Stewart remains fifth in the NASCAR Championship standings, 178 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson.

"We missed it a little bit today and it was one of those changes that we couldn't do on a regular pit stop, so we just kind of had to work around it," Stewart said. "I'm really proud of Darian (Grubb, crew chief) and these guys. They had good pit stops today and Darian and I kept talking about what we thought we could do to make the Office Depot/Old Spice Chevy better."

"I thought team-wise we had an awesome day working together and making gains at it. We never said, ‘Well, we just can't get it any better.' We kept throwing things at it to try to make it better," Stewart said.

Kurt Busch stretched his fuel mileage and beat Denny Hamlin by 25.686 seconds to win the Dickies 500 and score his 20th career Sprint Cup victory, his second of the season and his first at Texas. Matt Kenseth finished third, while Mark Martin and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top five. Stewart, Clint Bowyer, Greg Biffle, Jeff Burton and A.J. Allmendinger comprised the remainder of the top 10.

Stewart's teammate, Ryan Newman, driver of the No. 39 Haas Automation/U.S. Army Chevrolet Impala SS for Stewart-Haas Racing, finished 12th to score his 16th top-12 finish of 2009.

Although both SHR drivers are represented in this year's Chase for the Championship. Stewart remained fifth in the standings and is now 178 points behind Chase leader Jimmie Johnson, who was involved in a lap three accident and finished 38th. Newman fell one spot to ninth in the standings and is 324 points behind Johnson.

Only two races remaining before a champion is crowned following the season finale Nov. 22 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.  The next event on the Sprint Cup schedule is the Nov. 15 Checker O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway.