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.

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"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.

"We really needed to get that last 45 minutes of practice to get a good judge of where we were -- and we just didn't get it. So we spent most of [Saturday] night putting a fender on it and straightening the doors out and all that stuff, and I'm really proud of the guys for what they did."

Stewart applauded his crewmates as well.

"We were all here until 4:30 (p.m. Saturday when the garage closed), working on the right-front fender," Stewart said. "And those guys never complained about the little bit behind the 38 car put us."

After attempting to bang the right-front fender back into shape as long as they were permitted to by NASCAR on Saturday, Stewart's team got right back to it first thing Sunday morning when the garage reopened at 7 a.m. Even then, Stewart suspected his car was not quite right at the beginning of Sunday's race.

"It was just really, really tight, which tells me it probably wasn't 100 percent to begin with. So we just kept working around it all day," Stewart said. "I'm really proud of the guys for making all the changes that they did. We worked hard all day and had great pit stops. Everybody had a piece of the equation to get us into the top three."

Zipadelli added: "I was a little worried right off the bat because it was really, really tight right off the bat. I didn't anticipate it being that tight, so we had to get really aggressive on our adjustments on the first two stops. It came right around, so at that point, I was really relieved.

"I just thought, 'Now we've just got to get some track position.' We never really did get it. We just had to keep working at it to keep passing cars all day long. ... We fought our way to third. We didn't get no gimmes. We raced our way there, you know."

It was Stewart's fourth top-five finish in 15 races this season, yet he dropped one spot from sixth to seventh in the point standings -- because Edwards moved two points ahead of him and into sixth.

Stewart also has yet to win a race this season, but Zipadelli said that his has always been a second-half team -- and that he expects this season to be no different.

"If you go back and you look at our history, there are not many times where we've won before halfway. Most of our wins have come in the second half of the season," Zipadelli said. "It doesn't mean that we're going to go out there and rattle off a bunch of wins. But this sure is a nice confidence builder and I think the opportunities will be there. If we keep running the way we've been running and finishing in the top five, we'll have our chances and we'll get our wins."

Stewart said he felt almost like he had won Sunday.

"I can't say it feels as good as a win, but considering where we were with 20 minutes to go in Happy Hour, this might as well be a win," the driver said. "To have that stupid deal [Saturday] and then to have to start in the back because I screwed up in qualifying, that was just a multiplier. We all just kept working hard. The [team slogan] on the dash said, 'One at a time,' and that's just the way I approached it all day."

But before he could start passing cars one at a time, he had to let a couple go by one at a time.