Finish Adds Fuel to Chase

Tony Stewart, completely out of gas for the last mile, coasted to the checkered flag ahead of Casey Mears, who was also out of gas. And that 1-2 finish only begins to tell what a mess Sunday’s Banquet 400 at Kansas Speedway was, and what a mess it made of the Chase standings.

Third-place Mark Martin, the highest-finishing Chaser -- and the highest finisher with any fuel left -- simplified the way the finish went: “Everybody tried to make it,” he said of the final 69 laps on one tank of gas. “And a lot of them didn’t.”

Stewart won, but Jimmie Johnson should have, and would have, but for a split-second judgment with six laps left.

Johnson had a comfortable lead and was headed onto pit road for a splash of gas when Kasey Kahne spun in front of him.

“I thought that would bring out a caution, so I shot back onto to the racetrack, and the caution didn’t come out,” Johnson said. When the yellow didn’t fly.

But Johnson knew he was running on fumes and pitted two laps later, only to be caught speeding on the pit road and assessed a “pass-through” the pits penalty that led to a 14th-place finish. He remained eighth among the 10 playoff contenders.

Stewart, the 2005 NASCAR champion who missed the cut for this year’s Chase, acknowledged there was no way he’d have gambled on fuel had he been in contention for the championship.

“We had nothing to lose,” Stewart said, “and when we knew those guys can’t take that chance, that opened the door for us.”

Jeff Burton padded his lead in the playoff standings by playing it conservatively. He stopped for a splash with eight to go, passing up a shot at his second straight race win for a sure-thing fifth-place finish.

Burton now leads the Chase by 69 points over rookie Denny Hamlin, who finished 18th in the race and yet managed to gain two places in the standings. Martin jumped three places into third, 70 points behind Burton.

Johnson’s disaster was the third and last of the day for his powerful Hendrick Motorsports team’s three-driver contingent in the playoffs.

The most prominent of those, four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon, fell from second to sixth in the standings when a fuel pump failed on his Chevrolet with 30 laps to go, and he finished 39th in the 43-car field.

*

An off-duty police officer was in critical condition Sunday night after being shot several times during an attempted robbery at the speedway.

A Kansas City Police Department spokesman said the female officer, a 25-year veteran of the force, was working security at the track during the race.

A police spokeswoman said two suspects were taken into custody near the speedway soon after the 8 p.m. shooting.

*

Ed Hinton covers auto racing for Tribune newspapers. The Associated Press contributed to this report.