Stewart Holds Off Johnson for NASCAR Win at Martinsville

Tony Stewart won a paint-trading duel with Jimmie Johnson and overcame Hendrick Motorsports’ dominance of Martinsville Speedway, NASCAR’s smallest track, Sunday at Martinsville, Va.

It was Stewart’s second victory at Martinsville, where he also has won three poles and where he led 530 of 1,000 laps a season ago without winning either race.

“The racing here has been awesome since they’ve done everything,” he said, speaking of resurfacing and other improvements.

The race had all the typical beating and banging of a short-track event, but ended with none of the top contenders feeling as if they’d been wronged like last week in Bristol, Conn.

Stewart and Johnson dueled nose-to-bumper and side-by-side for four laps beginning with 30 to go Sunday, bringing the 65,000 fans to their feet.

After being rebuffed three times, Stewart finally banged his way around Johnson with 27 laps to go.

“I knew we were a little quicker,” Stewart said. “There was no way he was going to give it away, so we were going to have to take it away. We didn’t turn him around. We didn’t spin him out. We just got the position that we were after.”

Johnson said it’s easy for the one who prevailed to pass off the contact as typical short-track racing, but he had no complaints about being nudged and overtaken.

“I just kind of used up my stuff there at the end,” Johnson said.

Jeff Gordon, who had won both races here last season and four of the last six on NASCAR’s smallest and tightest oval, finished second, followed by Hendrick Motorsports teammate Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kyle Busch, also of Hendrick.

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Helio Castroneves turned around his luck on the circuits with left and right turns, winning the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg when Scott Dixon’s fuel strategy came up just short at St. Petersburg, Fla.

Castroneves had not even finished the three previous road races in the IRL IndyCar Series.

Dixon, who ran second most of the day, tried to conserve fuel after pitting on Lap 55 of the 100-lap event. The New Zealander stayed out as the other contenders made their stops, taking the lead when Castroneves drove his Marlboro Team Penske Dallara onto pit road on lap 88.

At that point, Dixon drove as hard as he could, trying to build a big enough margin that he could make a quick fuel stop near the end of the race and hold onto the lead. Dixon was ahead of Castroneves by nearly 16 seconds when he finally pitted on Lap 96.

The stop was a quick one, but not quick enough.

Dixon came back onto the track just behind Castroneves and never got the chance to make a run at him as a collision between Buddy Rice and Tomas Scheckter, battling for sixth place, brought out the second caution flag of the day and forced officials to end the race under yellow.

Tony Kanaan finished third, followed by Bryan Herta, Kosuke Matsuura, Vitor Meira and last year’s top rookie Danica Patrick.

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Fernando Alonso held off Kimi Raikkonen to win the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne, the 10th Formula One victory of his career.

Renault driver Alonso has two wins in three races this season.

Toyota driver Ralf Shumacher finished third. Nick Heidfeld drove a BMW-Sauber to fourth place and fifth went to Renault’s Giancarlo Fisichella.

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Top-fuel driver Brandon Bernstein raced to the ninth victory of his career, beating points leader Melanie Troxel with a quarter-mile run of 4.534 at 329.83 mph in the O’Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals at Baytown, Texas.

Funny-car driver Ron Capps extended his points lead with a 5.005-second, 293.47-mph victory over Bob Gilbertson. Mike Edwards won in pro stock for the first time in four years, beating Jim Yates with a 6.731 at 206.01 mph. Angelle Sampey remained perfect with her second win in two pro-stock motorcycle races, beating rival Andrew Hines with a 7.144 at 190.11 mph.