Kahne earns Petty a win

Wearing his trademark cowboy hat and wraparound sunglasses, Richard Petty walked into Victory Lane at Infineon Raceway, sipped a bit of Northern California wine and then declared: “It was one of those picture-perfect days.”

He could have been describing the weather here Sunday, but he was referring to what had just happened on the twisty Infineon racetrack.

Kasey Kahne not only won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race this year, he enabled Petty -- the legendary former stock-car driver and now co-owner of Kahne’s team -- to celebrate a victory by one of his cars for the first time in a decade.

“To see Richard Petty in the winner’s circle with us today, that was big,” Kahne said after he held off Tony Stewart through several late-race restarts to win the Toyota/Save Mart 350.

“It’s been a long time,” said Petty, 71. “This just really made us feel good.”

Australian Marcos Ambrose was third behind Stewart in front of an estimated 93,500, followed by reigning Cup champion Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin in fifth.

The victory not only ended a 37-race winless streak for Kahne, it also was his first on a road course.

“To win any race and to win at a road course for me is crazy,” said Kahne, who had never finished in the top 10 at the two road courses on the 36-race Cup schedule at Infineon and Watkins Glen, N.Y.

“We had an unbelievable car,” said Kahne, who grew up admiring Stewart’s racing skill. “I’m excited as can be to win a race at Infineon.”

Stewart, the Cup series points leader, had one final chance to catch Kahne in a two-lap overtime shootout that followed the race’s regulation 110 laps.

However, Kahne held off Stewart one more time to win on the 10-turn, 1.99-mile Infineon track.

Using NASCAR’s new double-file restart format, in which the leaders now line up side by side in the front after caution periods, Kahne repeatedly kept his No. 9 Dodge ahead of Stewart’s Chevrolet after taking the green flag.

Under the old format, the lead cars lined up single file on restarts while the cars one lap or more behind the leaders lined up on the inside.

“Kasey just never made a mistake at the end,” Stewart said. “He was just better than we were.”

Kahne’s win was a major lift for Petty’s team, which was created in the off-season by a merger between Petty Enterprises and Gillett Evernham Motorsports.

The team had struggled on the track this year while feeling the financial pinch of the economic problems hobbling Dodge and Chrysler. Prior to Sunday, the last Petty-affiliated driver to win a Cup race was John Andretti in 1999 at Martinsville, Va.

Asked whether Kahne’s win might boost the team’s fortunes, Petty -- who isn’t as involved in the preparation of his team’s cars as he was earlier in his ownership career -- was pragmatic as always.

“Hopefully, it’s the beginning of something else, but it’s just another day,” Petty said. “Everything fell together. The car was good, the crew was good, they made really good strategy on making their pit stops, the whole deal.

“We’ve run good enough to win a couple or three races, but circumstances just haven’t been on our side.”

Then Petty quipped: “We’ve got enough money to get to the next race” at New Hampshire Motor Speedway next Sunday.

Two of Kahne’s teammates also finished in the top 10: A.J. Allmendinger was seventh and Elliott Sadler 10th.

Ambrose’s strong finish came after he qualified third but was forced to start in the back of the 43-car field after blowing an engine in practice Saturday.

“We were in the hole pretty good” at the start, but “we’ve just got a resilient attitude,” Ambrose said.

Kahne’s win lifted him to 13th in the Cup standings, only three points behind Juan Pablo Montoya -- who finished sixth in the race -- in the 12th spot.

The top dozen drivers after the first 26 races get to compete for the championship in NASCAR’s Chase for the Cup in the final 10 races of the season.

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james.peltz@latimes.com