Stewart loses fuel gamble in '99 to give Burton victory (cont'd)

That wasn't the case for most of the other leaders. One by one, they each came in for a splash-and-go stop in the waning laps, including Burton, who made a 3-second stop. That gave Stewart a huge cushion over Andretti, who also was willing to gamble on fuel mileage.

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But with two laps remaining, Stewart -- on the cusp of winning his first Cup race -- suddenly slowed coming onto the backstretch. And almost simultaneously, Andretti ran out of fuel. As both cars coasted slowly for the pit entrance, Burton -- who hadn't led a lap all day -- found himself the leader of the race.

"When everybody else pitted, I was surprised that [Stewart] chanced it," Burton said. "They had such a gap at that point that they could have pitted and still won because everybody else had pitted."

Burton was elated to win, but certainly could commiserate with Stewart and his team.

"I feel bad for those guys because it's a bad way to lose a race," Burton said. "But I knew how far the car would run on the amount of gas, so I knew that we had to pit.

"We had some fortune at the end, obviously, with the No. 20 car running out of gas. But after starting 38th and making all those big changes to the car, you're just looking to put yourself in a position to win and we did that."

For Zipadelli, it was a lesson learned.

"We went for it and, obviously, we went with the wrong decision," Zipadelli said. "We thought we'd be about half of a lap short on fuel, and we were short a little more than that. I guess we could have pitted for gas, but it's easy to look back and say what's right and what's wrong. We'll just have to live with this and move on."

And Burton was more than willing to take credit for the win, his fourth of the season, even if it came in fortuitous circumstances.

"I don't care one bit," Burton said. "It doesn't matter to me. We got that trophy and we got those points. I don't care how we did it. You win a lot of races different ways, and to win races you've gotta put yourself in position. We put ourselves in position and did a better job than they did."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.