Second has Stewart happy to keep digging for Chase (cont'd)

"When you know that your car was really close -- if we were off then I think we would be more disappointed," Stewart said. "I'm pretty happy with the run [Sunday]. I know that we were just a little bit off, but the guy that won never made a mistake and didn't bobble."

It didn't even make Stewart envy Busch's ability to go all-out for wins, to pad the bonus point cushion he'll have -- currently 50 points over Carl Edwards -- when Busch clinches a spot in the Chase, which he can do next weekend at Michigan if he leaves there with a 585-point lead over 13th position.

"I'd love to be in that spot, but I'm afraid we're probably not going to be in that spot to have that just go-for-broke attitude," said Stewart, who won three and five races, respectively, in his 2002 and 2005 championship seasons. "The things that you do to get yourself in the Chase, you don't do things different -- you kind of stay in that mode. If you have a chance on fuel mileage or pit strategy or something on a day that you might be a fifth- or 10th-place car and you've got a shot with pit strategy to win, you definitely take it -- and in [Busch's] situation, you can take that chance.

"But I think the important thing for our team right now is just the fact of getting back in the top five consistently each week, and if we can do that, then that's the important thing for our team. Right now, we're just not in a position where we can take those gambles and take those risks right now."

Stewart had nothing but good words for his young teammate Busch, 23, who'll have 14 more races teaming with Stewart, who leaves to become half-owner of Stewart-Haas Racing in 2009. And Busch returned the favor.

"I knew he was going to be hard to beat," Busch said of the final restarts, when Stewart was dogging his tracks. "I was racing against the same stuff, so I knew it was going to be hard to beat Tony.

"He's such a great friend and such a great teammate and I'm really going to hate to see him leave at the end of the year and wish he would have stayed. He has been so fun to work with this year."

And despite his recently selected status as a "Legend of The Glen" for the most recent decade in the track's history, Stewart said beating Busch was never a possibility.

"He never made a mistake, he had a really, really good car [Sunday] and he was fast in all of the right spots that he needed to be fast in," Stewart said. "And so I think he ran a perfect race. I never really got that close to passing him, unfortunately. I never could get the runs in the right spots and that was the key, really."

Busch said Stewart was better than him around the "bus stop" chicane at the end of the backstretch, but nowhere else.

"He had me beat getting into the inner loop and to the middle of the inner loop," Busch said. "From there on out I think we pretty much had him covered everywhere else. We were able to get off the corners real well and we were able to get the car whoa'ed up really good with some brakes. That's what it takes here -- you have to be able to stop and you have to be able to go."

Added Stewart: "I thought we were real close. I mean, we're talking nit-picking stuff to get our car perfect, so I was real proud of our guys, our pit stops were good and I thought Zippy [crew chief Greg Zipadelli] had good pit strategy and it's days like this that you want every week -- uneventful."