Points tiebreaker gives Stewart championship after he beats Edwards for fifth win
Tony Stewart won the biggest game of winner-take-all in the history of NASCAR.
Rebounding from a succession of setbacks, Stewart took the checkered flag in Sunday’s rain-interrupted Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway to win the Sprint Cup championship in a tiebreaker over race runner-up Carl Edwards.
Tony Stewart’s fifth Chase victory made him a three-time Cup Series champ. Smoke needed every one as he and Carl Edwards finished in a dead heat and Stewart won on the tiebreaker.
With four new tires to Edwards’ two — thanks to a strategic gamble that paid off when rain hit the 1.5-mile speedway for the second time on Lap 213 of 267 — Stewart gradually pulled away after a restart on Lap 231 and claimed his third Cup title, bookending the five consecutive championships won by Jimmie Johnson from 2006 to 2010. Stewart also won in 2002.