Stewart Fires Back After Taking Pole

Tony Stewart blistered Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday to win the pole for today’s Brickyard 400, then blistered all other NASCAR tracks for “dragging their feet on soft wall installation.”

Praising Indy for its life-saving new energy-dissipating walls, Stewart rejected NASCAR’s and the other tracks’ claims that more testing is needed before the system goes into widespread use.

“Whether the testing was done adequately, I don’t care,” he said. “It can’t be any worse than hitting a solid concrete wall. I don’t know how it could possibly hurt us any more than a concrete wall already does.”

After observing how effective the new barriers were for the Indianapolis 500 in May--scientists believe as many as five drivers were saved from grave injuries in Indy car crashes--NASCAR agreed to let the system stay in place, with a few adjustments, for today’s race. This will be the first Winston Cup event run with soft retaining walls.

New Hampshire International Speedway officials had planned to install the system for the July 21 New England 300 but said NASCAR had asked them to hold off. NASCAR-hired experts said modifications to Indy’s system are needed because stock cars are twice as heavy as Indy cars, and because of the wide variety of shapes and sizes of tracks.

At Indianapolis on Saturday, Stewart had a qualifying run of 182.960 mph in a Pontiac, a track record for stock cars.

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Greg Biffle held off a late charge by Jason Keller over the final laps in the crash-filled NASCAR Busch Series Kroger 200 at Clermont, Ind.

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Dale Jarrett went to the lead and never fell back in the final event of this year’s International Race of Champions series, and Kevin Harvick finished fifth to take the title at Indianapolis.

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Six-time Pro Stock champion Warren Johnson failed to qualify for the FRAM-Autolite Nationals at Sonoma, ending a 15-year streak of 303 consecutive starts. Larry Dixon, John Force, Greg Anderson and Matt Hines were the top qualifiers for the today’s championship.

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Tony Bruncati won the seventh stage of the Miller Lite Big Ten Challenge in front of 5,752 at Irwindale Speedway.

The race was reduced to 60 laps from 75 because of five accidents. One sent Nathan Wulff to a Baldwin Park hospital for observation.

Andrew Phipps won the Vista Paint Super Stock series feature, Guy Tripp was victorious in the Modified 4s series feature and Roger Carufel Jr. won the Grand American Modified series feature.