Tony Stewart continued his mid summer surge as he picked up his third win in little less than a month in Sunday's Centurion Boats at The Glen.
Although the driver of the #20 Joe Gibbs Racing Chevrolet was one of the pre-race favourites, his fourth career win at the 2.45-mile Watkins Glen road course in picturesque upper state New York owed a lot to the uncharacteristic late race mistake from would be race-winner Jeff Gordon that saw the #24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet spin in turn one whilst leading on lap 88 of 90.
Gordon looked on course for his fifth Watkins Glen win after breaking clear of Stewart on the final restart of the day on lap 82 but then missed his braking point heading down towards turn one and looped his car, almost exactly mirroring Stewart's earlier spin at the same corner, whilst leading on lap 44.
On that occasion the lucky recipient was Gordon, who would use Stewart's mistake to assume a comfortable command of the event, but this time there was no chance for Gordon to perform the same kind of recovery drive put in by Stewart during the second half of the race.
In a race interrupted by eight caution periods and a 25 minute red flag to clear fluid from the track following the biggest crash of the day involving Juan Montoya and Kevin Harvick, Gordon had Stewart were easily the class of the field although as the field took the green flag at the start polesitter Gordon was somewhat surprised to see the #17 Roush-Fenway Ford of Matt Kenseth, from the second row of the grid, sliding down the inside of him to take the lead going into the first turn.
Kenseth's lead lasted less than a lap as his car proved to be a handful all day and Gordon quickly moved to establish himself at the front of the pack as Stewart and his JGR teammate Denny Hamlin sorted themselves out for second place.
![Tony Stewart - Home Depot Chevrolet [pic credit: image.net]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/300248.jpg)
