HAMPTON, Ga. -- It seemed like everything Tony Stewart tried on Sunday night failed to keep him from spinning his rear tires on restarts. And when the Emory Healthcare 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway came down to a couple of late-race restarts, Stewart was rapidly running out of tricks.

"I struggled on restarts all night," Stewart said. "Finally the last two, I hit it a lot closer and kept them from spinning quite as bad."

Stewart ends skid

Tony Stewart held off Carl Edwards at Atlanta for his first victory in 31 races.

• Complete story
• Video: Race Rewind
• Press Pass: Stewart
• Victory Lane: Stewart
• Final Laps: Atlanta

It got so bad that Stewart flipped through the notebook in his mind containing about 31 years of racing experience and was tempted to try something from his open-wheel days.

"I was almost embarrassed to talk about it, but it's just an old sprint-car trick that you do," Stewart said. "They have got a lot of rear brake and don't really have much front brake and you can drag the brake pedal and keeps you from spinning the tires. I'm not sure it would have worked but I didn't have enough confidence to take the brake balance and just run it to the back like that and drag the brake to help the wheel spin.

"I was afraid I would get going through the gears and get going and not count my rounds back and get myself in a problem at the end of the straightaway. So that was about the only thing I didn't try."

He didn't have to, because of two reasons. One, his pit crew kept turning out perfect stops, putting Stewart up front even when he was losing places on the track every time the green flag fell. And his No. 14 Chevrolet was strong in clean air at the end, allowing him to pull away from Carl Edwards on the final restart with 17 laps remaining.

"When you have a fast enough car like that, every time we lost the spots, we could get the majority of them back within a lap or two laps," Stewart said. "That's stout."

And instead of Edwards celebrating the end to his winless skein, Stewart was the one in Victory Lane.

"The pit crew is who we have got to give all the credit to," Stewart said. "They had an awesome pit stop the last time we came in that got us that track position that I lost on the previous restart. So you know, without that, I don't think we would have a shot to be here."

It's a good thing, because Stewart raved afterwards about the machine that propelled him to the win.

"This is, by far, the best car that I've ever had here," Stewart said. "[Sunday] was so much fun on the race car, because we could run the bottom, we could run the top, and I told [crew chief Darian Grubb on Saturday], there were times in practice where I have run higher than I have ever run here, and I told him, normally I don't have the confidence to put myself in that position to not have room to the right of me to give myself that buffer.

"[Sunday] is probably the only time that I can ever remember being at Atlanta and being able to take off and have the beginning of the run speed that we had."

“

The pit crew is who we have got to give all the credit to. They had an awesome pit stop the last time we came in that got us that track position that I lost on the previous restart. So you know, without that, I don't think we would have a shot to be here.

”

-- TONY STEWART

But in order to take advantage of that, Stewart had to get up front.

"We had to be the fastest car all night at the beginning of the run," Stewart said. "If we got track position and we got anywhere close to clean air, we were able to just take off.

"Once we got two or three laps in, I didn't have to run as hard as the guys behind me to try to pass me -- I was able to take care of the tires and after five more laps we were are able to drive away from those guys and open up a huge gap."

Fine after two or three laps wasn't as much an issue as getting up to speed again, something that created some cavalry charges into Turn 1 on a number of restarts, as drivers behind Stewart tried to avoid running him over.

"I was the guy normally in the middle of the three-wide because I couldn't get going and it's a wide enough track that guys could get around and go where I wasn't," Stewart said. "It wasn't a product of the track. It's that I was really struggling on it.

"The good thing is I probably could have got run over a lot of times and given a lot more opportunity to get run over but these guys were able to find ways around it. It wasn't good for me that they found ways around but it was good that they didn't run me over in the process."

For someone as competitive as Stewart, the frustration was palpable.

"It's not fun to lose spots like that, especially when you work so hard to get them," Stewart said. "And to lose them at the start/finish line, or before we get to Turn 1, it's kind of disheartening.

"But like we mentioned earlier, when you have a car that that's fast and is really good off the bat on the restart and you can get those spots back, it's easier to not get as discouraged when it's happening and know that we have a good shot at getting those spots back within a lap or two."

And with the win, not only did Stewart extend his Cup winning streak to 12 seasons, but he picked up 10 bonus points for the Chase and some valuable momentum. But Stewart refuses to believe this is as good as things can get.

"I don't know if we have peaked," Stewart said. "I mean, how do you know when you've peaked? I guess if you're winning every week, you feel like you're peaking to a certain degree.

"The thing I guess I've been really excited about, especially the last two months, we have been kind of silent every weekend and we are gaining on it. And it's not been in one-week increments where we've had a big change and all of the sudden everybody goes, wow, they are starting to figure it out."

So has Stewart's team reached its potential in 2010, or is Sunday night's success a sign of better things to come?

"I hope we are not as high as we are going to get on the thing," Stewart said. "I think we got room to be better and I think we got guys right now that nights like [Sunday] are what keep these guys excited about the long hours they are putting in and the hard work they are putting in. When you can help deliver some results like this, it makes those guys work that much harder to keep doing that every week."