Avondale, Ariz. ? Matt Kenseth gave Jack Roush a win Sunday, but it’s clear the team owner isn’t completely happy.

Roush, who fields four cars in the Winston Cup series, is still steaming over a 25-point penalty NASCAR levied last week against Roush Racing driver and title contender Mark Martin.

A fourth-place finish by Martin in Sunday’s Checker Auto Parts 500, combined with an eighth-place finish by series leader Tony Stewart, chopped Stewart’s lead from 112 to 89 points going into the season-finale next Sunday in Homestead, Fla.

No matter what Martin does in that race, Stewart :quot; a two-time winner at the Homestead-Miami Speedway :quot; will capture the 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.

“I’m just trying to keep Mark focused on the race,” said Roush, whose cars all finished in the top 12 on 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.”

Roush noted the 25 points wouldn’t reverse the standings at this point. It would just make it a closer race.

“If Tony Stewart wins by more than 25 points, we’ll certainly celebrate his victory as we should, as being our champion going into next year.”

Roush said the decision on a possible appeal of Martin’s penalty, which would have to be filed by Thursday, is in the hands of team president Geoff Smith.

“I am so upset, so out of my mind, that I can’t organize a decent thought that would be reasonable to set a strategy around. Geoff is looking at the thing,” Roush said.

Still, he was able to take some solace in his team’s nine wins this season :quot; a series-leading five by Kenseth, three by Kurt Busch and one by Martin. Jeff Burton, last among the Roush drivers at 12th in the points, has not won in 2002.

Matt Kenseth, front, leads Bobby Hamilton into Turn 2 during the NASCAR Checker Auto Parts 500. Kenseth won the race Sunday in Avondale, Ariz.

Kenseth turned a two-tire stop into victory at Phoenix International Raceway, getting out of the pits first on lap 261 of the 312-lap race. 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.

“We went and tested this past week and we were fastest. I feel like we can win that race. We’ve dominated in the past and I feel it’s time we get our crown back there.”

Stewart won the 1999 and 2000 races at Homestead-Miami Speedway and was denied a victory last year when he was led early but faded after his last pit stop to finish 19th.

“We had a good car, just not good enough to win,” said Martin, who has been a series runner-up three times but never a champion. “If we could have got out front we had a chance, but we just couldn’t.”

Martin did not want to talk about the championship duel.

Asked if his team considered a two-tire stop, he replied: “Maybe we should have taken two there at the end. I was really thinking about it, but we also didn’t want anything to go wrong there.”

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 No. 17 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, a CART star making his first Winston Cup start, and sent him into the wall.

The leaders pitted on lap 250 with 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 :quot; about half a straightaway on the 1-mile oval.

“The last pit stop was important,” Kenseth said. “After we ran out of gas we didn’t get a lap down, and that was a big help, too.”

The winner, who was leading after the drivers ahead of him made their stops, said he was fortunate not to lose a lap because he ran out of gas just before the finish line and his engine died by the time he got to Turn 2.

“I slowed extra careful when I got to the pits, too, because I didn’t have a tach and I didn’t want to get caught speeding,” Kenseth said. “We were fortunate to be running in the top five before we ran out of gas and that’s why we didn’t lose a lap.”

Wallace was frustrated as his string of winless races climbed to 61.

“We gained a lot of points, but we haven’t won yet,” said Wallace, who has 54 career victories. “We’re getting closer and closer and closer. We’ve got one race to go and, if it’s meant to be, it will happen. I’d really hate to see that streak of 16 straight years with at least one win go away.”

Gordon finished third, followed by Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Busch and Stewart.

The battle for third place in the standings also got tighter, with Busch just eight points ahead of both rookie Jimmie Johnson and Wallace and nine points in front of Gordon.