Top 10 locked in after Stewart's victory

Ten drivers have locked up spots in the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship.

No one is feeling better about his chances than Tony Stewart.

The car owner raced the No. 14 Chevy to his first win of the year, pulling away from Carl Edwards off the final restart Sunday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Ga.

“Ring the bell, baby!” Stewart screamed over the radio as he took the checkered flag for his 38th career victory, and third at Atlanta.

On a night when much of the racing was fender to fender, Stewart beat Edwards by a comfortable 1.316 seconds for his first victory since Oct. 4, 2009, at Kansas, leaving Edwards winless since the 2008 season finale.

Jimmie Johnson was third, followed by Jeff Burton and Kyle Busch.

Ten drivers have now clinched spots in the 12-man Chase for the Sprint Cup championship going into the final race before the playoff begins, led by points leader Kevin Harvick. Jeff Gordon, Busch, Stewart, Edwards, Burton, Johnson, Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin are also heading to the 10-race playoff.

Still looking to lock up spots heading into next weekend’s race at Richmond — essentially the regular-season finale — are No. 11 Greg Biffle, a native of Vancouver, Wash., and No. 12 Clint Bowyer.

Bowyer has a 117-point lead on No. 13 Ryan Newman and merely needs to finish 28th at Richmond to clinch his spot. Sentimental favorite Mark Martin, trying to win his first Cup championship at age 51, slipped a spot in the standings and is now 15th — a daunting 147 points out of the playoff.

The final caution of the night came out after Newman made contact with Enumclaw’s Kasey Kahne, nearly causing a crash on the backstretch with 24 laps to go.

Kahne then made contact with Johnson and got a flat tire that ended his chances of qualifying for the Chase. Kahne finished 32nd and dropped from 16th to 18th in the driver standings, 210 points behind Bowyer, mathematically eliminating him from contention for the Chase.

A few laps before Newman’s contact, Kahne was leading the race and less than 40 points behind Bowyer – and ahead of Newman and Martin. Kahne, who led 16 laps, exchanged words with Newman after the race.

Stewart was out front when the green came back out with 19 laps to go, and he zoomed off the line to beat Edwards into the first corner. From there, the red Stewart-Haas Racing machine steadily pulled away, clearly the strongest car on a night in which he led eight times for a total of 176 laps — more than the rest of the field put together.

“I didn’t hit a restart all night until right there at the end,” Stewart said.