NASCAR Stewart controls own destiny on road to Winston Cup title

He can wrap up his first championship next Sunday.
AVONDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- Jack Roush will gladly congratulate Tony Stewart and his Joe Gibbs Racing team if they win the Winston Cup championship -- but only if they win by more than 25 points.
Matt Kenseth, one of Roush's four Winston Cup drivers, gave the team owner his ninth win of the season Sunday in the Checker Auto Parts 500, but it's clear Roush isn't completely happy.
He remains irate over a 25-point penalty NASCAR levied last week against Roush Racing driver and title contender Mark Martin.
Lead narrows
A fourth-place finish by Martin on Sunday in the Checker Auto Parts 500, combined with an eighth-place finish by series leader Tony Stewart, sliced Stewart's lead from 112 to 89 points going into the season finale next Sunday in Homestead, Fla.
No matter what Martin does there, Stewart -- the winner in Homestead in 1999 and 2002 -- is solidly in control. Stewart will win his first NASCAR title if he doesn't lead a lap and finishes 22nd or better; leads one lap and finishes 24th or better; or leads the most laps and finishes 25th or better.
Roush is certainly not conceding the championship.
"I'm just trying to keep Mark focused on the race," said Roush, whose cars all finished in the top 12 Sunday. "It would be great if he could win another race. It would be great if he closed on Tony.
"But Tony has definitely got the edge, and it's based on NASCAR's action and on the way Tony and that team has run all year. They've been the best team."
Winner
Kenseth earned the sixth win of his career by turning a two-tire stop into victory, getting out of the pits first on lap 261 of the 312-lap race at Phoenix International Raceway. He stayed out front the rest of the way.
Stewart and Martin ran in the top 10 for most of the 500-kilometer event, but Stewart never led and Martin picked up the five-point bonus for leading at least one lap during a mid-race pit stop sequence.
"We did the best we could with what we had," Stewart said. "We were an eighth-place car today, that's all we had. We didn't get hurt too much today. Now, we're going to a track I really like."
Martin, a three-time series runner-up, didn't want to talk about the race for what would be his first championship.
"We had a good car, just not good enough to win," he said. "If we could have got out front we had a chance, but we just couldn't."
Dave Blaney finished in seventh place.
Pit stop
Kenseth, who had been running fifth early in the race, fell to 11th after running out of gas and having to coast to the pits for his first stop on lap 122.
He kept his Ford near the front, though, and was third when the fourth and final caution flag of the race came out on lap 258 after Jason Leffler hit Christian Fittipaldi, who was making his first Winston Cup start, and sent him into the wall.
The leaders pitted on lap 250 with Kurt Busch and Jeff Gordon ahead of Kenseth. While Kenseth and Rusty Wallace each put on only two fresh tires, the rest of the challengers changed four and Kenseth and Wallace hit the track 1-2.
That's the way it stayed to the end, with Kenseth beating Wallace's Ford to the finish line by 1.344 seconds -- about half a straightaway on the mile oval.
Gordon finished third, followed by Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Busch and Blaney.