The victory was Stewart's fifth of the season and 29th of his Nextel Cup career.

"I've been racing 27 years and I can count on two hands the cars that I've had like today," said Stewart, who led 278 of 339 laps.

With weather threatening to make it a shortened race, pole winner Brian Vickers led the field to the green flag for 334 scheduled laps of racing. After four laps under yellow, the "real" racing began and Kurt Busch immediately went to the lead.

Also moving up quickly was the points leader, Matt Kenseth, who started 36th, but wasted no time and was 29th after a dozen laps. With the threat of rain, he couldn't afford to wait before coming to the leaders. However, his car was too loose to get much further up the ladder and he would have to wait until after his first pit stop to make anymore headway.