NASCAR Takes Turns Today

When Tony Stewart drove to victory at Infineon Raceway a year ago, it set in motion a summer winning spree that carried him to his second NASCAR Nextel Cup championship.

Stewart is in the hunt for a third title, but it will take an extra effort for the trenchant Indiana driver to use today’s race as the launching pad for another crown.

Many expected the Joe Gibbs Racing driver, who has won twice here in seven races overall, to qualify on the pole for the Dodge/Save Mart 350 if four-time Infineon winner Jeff Gordon could not.

But Stewart qualified 12th, and Gordon 11th, so they’ll have to hustle to reach the front on the 1.99-mile, 10-turn course formerly known as Sears Point, where passing is a challenge.

Stewart also made it clear that Gordon is not his only problem.

“There are still 42 guys out there and neither one of us is on the pole, so I don’t think we should worry about each other,” he said. “We better worry about the guys who are ahead of us right now.”

Even so, Stewart remains the favorite. He has won three of the last four NASCAR road races -- the two others were at Watkins Glen, N.Y., in 2004 and 2005 -- and he says he is fully recovered from a broken shoulder blade he suffered in a crash at Concord, N.C., in late May.

He’ll need his strength, because Stewart himself noted that the hilly, taxing Infineon Raceway is “one of the places that you don’t get hardly any chance to rest during a lap.” “You’re working almost all the way around here, and if you do get a break, it’s a second or two at a time,” he said.

But Stewart was typically blunt when asked about having to turn right, something Cup drivers must do only at Infineon and Watkins Glen.

“It’s not hard, and if you don’t figure it out, you’re going to crash,” he said. “We do it all the time in street cars, it’s not like we can’t figure it out in race cars.”

This year’s pole-sitter is Kurt Busch, the Penske Racing South driver making his 200th start in the Miller Lite Dodge. Busch won this year at Bristol, Tenn., but otherwise has struggled and is 16th in the points race.

That doesn’t bode well for his making the Chase for the Championship, in which only the top 10 points leaders compete for the title during the final 10 races of the season.

But Busch insists he still has time to make the chase, and he came to wine country intent on finishing well, even if road courses aren’t his strong suit.

The Infineon race is one “you have to get excited about,” he said. “We look at this race as an opportunity to gain points. We’ve definitely had our share of bad luck, so I hope that balances out.”

If Busch wins, it will be the first time that a Dodge has won a race at Infineon or Watkins Glen. The last time a Dodge reached victory lane on a road course was in 1977, when Richard Petty won at the old Riverside International Raceway.

But it might be another Dodge that wins this year, one driven by red-hot Kasey Kahne.

The Evernham Motorsports driver has won four times in the first 15 races this year, including last week’s race at Broooklyn, Mich., and he qualified sixth for today’s race -- his best start at Infineon.

“I think we can win with the right strategy and end up better than everybody expects,” he said. “I hope I can win here, but it’s not going to be easy.”

Meanwhile, Riverside’s David Gilliland will make his first Cup start after qualifying 31st in his first attempt to break into NASCAR’s top series.

Only a week ago, Gilliland won a NASCAR Busch Series race at Kentucky Speedway in only his seventh start in that division.

“It would be foolish to expect a repeat finish from Kentucky, but a top-20 is not out of the question,” Gilliland said.

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Cup regular Brian Vickers held off road-racing specialist Boris Said and won NASCAR’s AutoZone West Grand National race here Saturday.

Vickers led all but three of the 64 laps.

“Brian just didn’t make any mistakes,” observed Said, the Carlsbad driver who also qualified fifth for today’s Cup race. “I was hoping he would, but he didn’t.”