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Monday, March 26
Love tap costs Stewart $10,000
Associated Press
BRISTOL, Tenn. -- At the height of their feud last season,
Jeff Gordon threatened to knock Tony Stewart into a wall the next chance he had.
It took him six months, but he finally got a measure of revenge
when he sent Stewart into a spin in the final turn at Bristol Motor
Speedway.
|  | | Tony Stewart was fined and put on probation for spinning out Jeff Gordon on Sunday. |
The tap sent Stewart up the high banking toward the outside
wall. Stewart's retaliation -- he raced around the track on the
cooldown lap and hit Gordon on pit road -- rekindled the rivalry
between two of NASCAR's biggest names.
On Monday, NASCAR fined Stewart $10,000 and placed him on
probation until Aug. 29.
Both drivers played down the bumps, the first of which cost
Stewart a top 5 finish.
"I've got no hard feelings against Jeff, and I don't think he
has any against me," Stewart said.
That's not how it looked Sunday, when the two resumed a feud
that dates back at least to last August.
Gordon had been chasing Stewart for fourth place for several
laps when they entered Turn 3 on the last lap Sunday. Gordon slid
down to pass Stewart, but the cars touched.
Stewart spun out, Gordon slid past him and finished fourth.
Stewart ended up 25th, after straightening his car out and motoring
across the finish line.
Although it initially appeared that Stewart struck the wall, his
car only shot up Bristol's 36-degree banking and stalled after
spinning.
He then hustled around the track on the cooldown lap in pursuit
of Gordon, who had entered pit row by the time Stewart caught him.
Stewart made a hard left into the pits, maneuvered through the
traffic and rammed into the back of Gordon. The hit caused Gordon
to spin out and slam the retaining wall, and an in-car camera
showed Stewart giving Gordon an obscene gesture as he drove off.
"That didn't surprise me a bit," Gordon said of the
retaliation.
Gordon and Stewart have been battling since last August, when
the two clashed at Watkins Glen, N.Y., when Stewart sent Gordon
into a wall.
They ended up in a shouting match when Stewart went to Gordon's
hauler to apologize, and Gordon promised Stewart he would knock him
into a wall "the next chance I get."
All eyes were on them the next week, when the two again tangled
on the track. Once again, Stewart knocked Gordon out of the race,
but afterward they both chalked the incident up as a racing
accident.
The feud soon simmered down, but the rivalry between the two
former open-wheel racers has obviously lingered -- proven Sunday.
"We're both open-wheel racers who 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 every time we're on the race track," Stewart
said. "We just had a meeting of the minds in the last quarter of
the last lap of a 500-lap race."
The latest incident earned them both a meeting with NASCAR
officials after the race. Before Gordon spoke with officials, he
defended his actions and said Stewart should have seen him
attempting to pass him.
"I thought it was pretty clean," Gordon said. "I did
everything I could do to keep from hitting him. I didn't want it to
come down to the last lap like that, but if you've got a position
and you've been working on it a long time, you're going to do it
and you're going to take everything you can all the way to the
end."
Gordon had no comment after his brief meeting with NASCAR.
Stewart's time before the sanctioning body lasted much longer
than Gordon's.
"It's just racing," he said.
Last week, NASCAR fined Busch Series drivers Ryan Newman and Tim
Fedewa $5,000 each and placed them both on probation for the rest
of the season for hitting each other after the race.
Stewart's penalty might have harsher because he hit Gordon on
pit road, when crew members and NASCAR officials were not protected
and could have been injured had Gordon's car spun another way.
Stewart apologized for that.
"I spun him on the pit lane and that was wrong," Stewart said.
"I could have hurt somebody, in all reality."
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