Stewart salvages weekend with third-place finish

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Heading into Sunday's Citizens Bank 400 at Michigan International Speedway, driver Tony Stewart said he had a plan that seemed, well, a little screwy.

Starting in the 41st position, Stewart claimed -- with a grin -- that he deliberately dropped behind the cars being driven by Jeff Green and A.J. Allmendinger when they all reached the start-finish line for the first time in the 200-mile lap race at the 2-mile oval. Green and Allmendinger were the only two cars to start behind Stewart, in the 42nd and 43rd positions, respectively.

Lap-by-Lap

Carl Edwards took the lead with 35 laps to go and and never looked back in the Citizens Bank 400 on Sunday. Follow how he went from a pit-road penalty to Victory Lane.

• Complete story, click here
• Video highlights, click here

"I made sure I crossed the start-finish line at the green dead last," Stewart said. "I made sure Allmendinger got by me, so I could say I went from dead last to wherever we finished."

Then Stewart immediately went to work, passing not only Green and Allmendinger but virtually the entire field before his day was done. He ended up finishing third, behind only eventual race winner Carl Edwards and second-place finisher Martin Truex Jr.

"To go from 43rd to third is pretty good," Stewart said. "I'm not going to complain about that."

No one on Stewart's team was about to complain about Sunday's finish after what happened during the final Nextel Cup practice at the track on Saturday. As he began to make his way around the track after putting on fresh tires, Stewart ran into the back of driver David Gilliland's No. 38 Ford when Gilliland began to make his way to the pits at the end of a long run on old tires.

The problem was that Gilliland never provided the common courtesy hand signal indicating that he was going to slow down and head for the pits, an oversight that resulted in Stewart tearing up the right-front end of his No. 20 Chevrolet. This came after Stewart had struggled badly in qualifying, and put crew chief Greg Zipadelli in a real bind when it came to trying to get Stewart's car right for the start of Sunday's race.

"We didn't qualify well, so we dug ourselves a whole," Zipadelli said. "Then we worked on our racecar really hard and got it pretty good -- but we got ourselves in trouble and missed probably the most important 45 minutes of practice of all weekend, because that was in the heat of the day. We tore up the right-front fender of the racecar and couldn't compare ourselves to anyone else because then we weren't sure where we were with it. (Continued)