NASCAR WCUP: Tony Stewart Post Race Notes, Food City 500, Bristol

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

March 26, 2001

TONY STEWART, NO. 20 HOME DEPOT PONTIAC GRAND PRIX:

(ON WHAT HAPPENED IN THE INCIDENT WITH JEFF GORDON) "We just went in the corner on the last lap together. My spotter told me he was looking low. By looking at the tape he was a little further than that. But, I didn't see him at the door and I know that any time the roles have been reversed he is expecting me to lift.

"It's just racing. It's just Bristol. It's part of the deal. The reason we ended up in the [NASCAR] trailer [after the race] is because I spun him on the pit lane and that was wrong. I could have hurt somebody, in all reality. I apologize to Home Depot and all of our sponsors for doing that because that wasn't right.

"It was just hard racing at Bristol. It's just unfortunate that it happened in the last quarter of a lap."

(IS THIS OVER NOW?) "I've got no hard feelings against Jeff and I don't think he has any against me. We both are open wheel racers that are stock car racers now, and we're both aggressive and we both want to win and we both want to get every spot we can get every time we're on the racetrack. We just had a meeting of the minds in the last quarter of the last lap after a 500-lap race."

(ANY FINES OR ANYTHING TO COME OUT OF THIS?) "They are going to call me tomorrow as far as what I did on the pit lane. But that's the only thing that they really called us into the trailer [for]. They wanted to make sure that there weren't any hard feelings between us and there's not."

Text provided by Al Larsen

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