2009 Sprint All-Star - Saturday 5/16

Tony Stewart won the All-Star Race Saturday night under the lights @ Lowes Motor Speedway!

Tony Stewart passed Matt Kenseth through turn 2 on lap 99 of 100 for his 1st All-Star race win and his 1st as an owner/driver.

"There's a lot of races I still haven't won yet. But it's a hard race to win," Stewart said soon after scoring his first win for Stewart-Haas. "There's nobody holds anything back. I mean, you look at the racing out there tonight, and how many times you see Jimmie Johnson spin out? How many times did Jeff Gordon get spun out? Three wide for the lead with less than 10 laps to go. You don't see that very often. You know, this is a special race. You know it's different. You know it's going to be more difficult because of that. And we always, in the past last 10 years here, were always good on long runs and always good late in the race. And this kind of format never fit our package that we had. And tonight it just worked out for us."



No points were on the line - just hard racin' and a cool million dollar pay check! To which Stewart says:

"There's guys on this team that haven't been to Victory Lane before. And that was something I was really looking forward to was getting there and congratulating Gene on his first win and these guys that have been with the organization and haven't been in Victory Lane, to see those guys get their first win and be a part of it with them was what I was really looking for. But they've been an awesome group of guys to work with up to this point. And that's the most gratifying part about it. It's about seeing those guys and seeing them celebrating and smiling in Victory Lane when I got there and seeing how happy they were and the excitement on their faces. There's no check that you can write in any amount that's going to make up for that and could take the place of it."

We knew he was getting close to that first win as an owner-driver. In 11 point races so far this season, Stewart has posted 8 top-10 finishes and has posted 5 top-5 finishes in the past 6 (point) races. His driver, Ryan Newman has finished in the top-10 five times.

Matt Kenseth held on for a runner-up finish. Kurt Busch ran third followed by Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards - rounding out the top 5.

100 laps = 150 miles which were broken down into 4 segments.

1st segment: Jimmie Johnson started from the pole and lead all the laps of the 50-lap first segment. Johnson was the winner of the 1st segment.

2nd segment: Kyle Busch led all 20 laps of the 2nd segment. Busch was the winner of the 2nd segment.

3rd segment: Kyle Busch stayed out on the race track between the 2nd and 3rd segments for track position. Kyle surrendered the lead to Jeff Gordon half way through the 3rd segment. Jeff Gordon led the final 10 laps and won the 3rd segment.

4th segment: While Jeff Gordon was leading, Ryan Newman and Kyle Busch went 3-wide for the lead which didn't work out so well and sent Gordon spinning in the grass and contact with the wall. Jimmie Johnson took a spin during the final segment which dropped him back to a 13th place finish. Kenseth took the lead from Kyle for 4 laps before Stewart took over to win.

For All-Star race results, click here.

There were 7 cautions for 3 laps and 7 lead changes among 5 drivers:

J. Johnson 1-50; Kyle Busch 51-80; J. Gordon 81-90; Kyle Busch 91; J. Gordon 92; Kyle Busch 93-94; M. Kenseth 95-98; T. Stewart 99-100.

Sam Hornish Jr won the Sprint Showdown. Jamie McMurray finished 2nd. Both advanced into the All-Star race.

For Sprint Showdown results, click here.

Hornish Jr would go on to finish the All-Star race - 16th. McMurray posted an 9th place finish.

Joey Logano won the Sprint Fan vote. He finished the All-Star - 8th.