Busch all smiles after Stewart pushes to win (cont'd)

"He wasn't on me hard," Busch said. "It was just a little bit, and just enough that I kept getting loose and kept getting loose. By the time you get so far, you're pretty much gone -- and I was able to keep it, thankfully for that."

Stewart repeatedly praised Busch for what the two-time Cup champion called "the best save I've seen in a long, long time." But Stewart also repeatedly confessed only to loosening Busch, he claimed without contact.

"I hope it's not going to be like that," Stewart said when asked if that was going to be the only way to pass people throughout Speedweeks. "I don't believe we touched him [because] if we had touched him and sent him up the racetrack, he would have crashed for sure.

"I think that save he made in Turn 2 will be among the top five of the year."

Busch's older brother, 2004 Nextel Cup champion Kurt Busch, said he was in the midst of a drafting shuffle when the incident occurred, but that he didn't have to have an eyewitness view to know what happened.

"I was ninth or 10th at that point, but I knew exactly what happened," Kurt said. "It was a matter of Tony waiting for the best opportunity.

"Tony's going to do what he needed to do to win, and I think Kyle would have done the same thing. Nothing really got started there except a guy wanting to win the Shootout."

And despite finishing where he did in his second career Shootout, Kyle Busch grinned throughout his post-race interview session, despite the only real payoff in the event being the win.

A quiet moment and a firm congratulatory handshake from car owner Rick Hendrick helped put Kyle Busch's mind at ease.

"I would be [more frustrated] if it was the [Daytona] 500 and that has a lot to do with it," Busch said. "I had a great time out there. It was a lot of fun [and] these guys gave me an awesome car so there's not much that I can complain about.

"The best one won tonight, definitely. [Stewart] was an awesome pusher, but I just wasn't able to hang onto it, there, when he got me real loose, when he was bump-drafting me through the corner.

"It was a tough break for us because we weren't able to come out of it with a win tonight but we learned some stuff about it. Maybe those two tires weren't quite what we needed, but we'll go into the [Gatorade Duel] 150s and learn from it and go to the [Daytona] 500 after that."

After the incident Kyle Busch ultimately slid as low as 17th among the 19 cars of the 21-car starting field that were still running, but finished seventh when a multi-car accident created a last-lap melee between Turn 4 and the finish line.

"I came off of [Turn] 4 and I saw somebody a little bit sideways and I knew they were going to hit the fence," Busch said. "I headed low and I knew there were going to be cars going low and coming back across so I just kind of aimed for the middle an hoped for the best."