Chevy driver Tony Stewart pulled away from Ford drivers Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards after the final caution with 12 laps to go to win his first Nextel Cup race of the year at Chicagoland Sunday in the USG Sheetrock 400. 

It was Stewart's first win since Texas last November breaking a 20-race winless streak. 

Matt Kenseth was second followed by Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick and Casey Mears.

A capacity crowd of more than 100,000 spectators cheered Stewart home first after a flurry of late-race caution flags kept bunching the field for restarts.

Stewart has encountered various forms of bad racing luck this season although being in contention for a win almost every race. He was a contender all afternoon Sunday running with the leaders and leading throughout the day before his pit crew got him back on the track after one of the final caution periods. He never looked back.

When it was over, he did his signature "Spiderman" climb up the fence to the starter's stand, much to the delight of the cheering crowd.

Popular Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished 19th after being a contender most of the race. His power steering failed near the end, which dropped him out of the frontrunners.

Pole-sitter Mears charged into the lead when the green flag started the race but Truex took over on the eighth lap. Truex's DEI teammate Paul Menard, however, did not get off to a good start. His Chevrolet rolled down pit road on the 10th lap with smoke spewing from beneath the hood.

Jimmie Johnson moved in front on the 20th lap with Truex, Mears, Kyle Busch, and Earnhardt strung out behind.

Jeff Green did a solo spin in turn two on lap 58, bringing out the first caution of the sunny afternoon. Everyone had made a green flag pit stop at that point and Harvick, winner of Saturday's NASCAR Busch Series race, sped to the front of the field.

After 76 laps, Harvick led Reed Sorensen, Stewart, Kyle Busch, Gordon, Kenseth, Johnson, Newman, Bowyer and Earnhardt. Earnhardt missed the pit entrance and had to make another lap which cost him valuable time. Truex also had a troublesome stop which shuffled him back to 11th spot.

David Reutimann’s Toyota limped to the garage before halfway with mechanical problems as Harvick continued to set a blistering pace.

The driver of the Richard Childress Shell/Pennzoil Chevy pitted along with everyone else at lap 110, the second green flag stop of the day.

Once everyone stopped, Harvick was back in front with Johnson, Stewart, Kyle Busch and Kenseth close behind.

Johnson and Stewart passed Harvick for the lead and second spot on lap 122. At halfway (133 laps), Johnson was in control with Stewart second and Harvick third. Trailing this trio was Kyle Busch, Kenseth, Gordon, Newman, Earnhardt, Edwards and Truex.

Johnson's day ended prematurely when he cut right-rear tire while leading causing him to make contact with the SAFER barrier.

Post-race quotes

Tony Stewart

Four times in your career you had won before the summer. This year you waited until July, scoring your second win here in Chicago

Stewart: All these Home Depot guys won us the race. They got us the track position we needed. Especially with late cautions like that. Being out front, being in clean air was everything, so every one of these guys with the Monte Carlo SS were the ones who got us in victory lane today, for sure.

Especially all you’ve gone through, all this team has gone has gone through, not winning since last fall at Texas, this has to be special for a lot of reasons, especially trying to build momentum going into Indy.

Stewart: Yeah, we had a good feeling we were going to have a good weekend. A good friend of ours had a birthday today. We always do good on birthdays for some reason. I’m glad this is over. I’m going on vacation.

How big was the motivational talk by the coach who showed up here yesterday (team owner Joe Gibbs)

Stewart: It’s good. I mean, you know, it was a bigger drama with the media than it was with the teams in all reality. We got a strong group of guys, both with the Home Depot team, the FedEx team and the Interstate Batteries team, and you know, good thing about Joe is Joe knows how to organize people and keep people motivated and keep them working together. I think Denny and I worked better today than we worked, even giving each other signals on where we thought we needed to be on the racetrack. Stuff like that will just make the team stronger each week.

MATT KENSETH
No. 17 USG Sheetrock/DeWalt Ford Fusion (finished 2nd) – “It was pretty good. I thought we had a – most of the day – a fourth- to eighth-place car, and made some really good adjustments, got the car a lot better where we could run with them. It just seemed like the 48 and the 20 were in front of us and we couldn’t quite run with them guys, but other than that, we seemed to be able to break even with most of them, depending on what track position we had. So, overall it was a good day. It feels good to come home second. I had that one shot at him and I just couldn’t quite finish the pass. If I could’ve finished that pass on the re-start, I would’ve liked to have been in front of him and tried to hold him off – I don’t know if I could’ve or not, but I would’ve liked to like that chance. It was nice to be in clean air.”

CARL EDWARDS
No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion (finished 3rd) – “I just had a lot of fun. I felt like I worked really hard today, I did the best job I could do. We’d work up there and then we’d have a couple of bad pit stops that really set us back. In the end, I don’t know if that really affected our day or not because we took four tires there at the end and that was kind of our strategy anyway. We thought that the four tires would be enough to win the race. There at the end we needed about 20 more laps for the tires to really work. I think Tony had a dominant, I think his car was faster than ours, but we had a little better tires so we were one little increment faster than him there at the end and we needed a lot of time to catch him. I got to race with Matt there at the end; that was pretty cool. I should’ve stayed to the high side, I think I would’ve gotten him. I tried to slide job him and that didn’t work out, but I did have a good time today.”

Post-Race Notes

• Tony Stewart’s win was his 30th victory in 303 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series races.
• This is his first victory and 12th top-10 finish in 2007.
• This is his second victory and fifth top-10 finish in seven races at Chicagoland Speedway.
• Out of the seven NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series races at Chicagoland, six have been won by Chevrolet, and one win by Dodge.
• Matt Kenseth (second) posted his 13th top-10 finish in 2007 and his third in seven Chicago races.
• Carl Edwards (third) posted his first top 10 in three races at Chicago and his seventh of 2007.
• Jeff Gordon finished 10th and continues to lead the 2007 point standings. He has led the point standings since Bristol and is now 299 points ahead of Denny Hamlin who finished 17th today.

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