KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? Ryan Newman didn’t say it, but judging by some of his other comments Sunday it’s pretty clear that anyone questioning his race strategy simply can choke on his fuel fumes.

“I kind of tell it like it is,” said Newman, who again was victorious in a Winston Cup race because of a gamble on gas.

Newman won the Banquet 400 Sunday when he opted not to not make a late pit, but still had enough fuel and horsepower to hold off the day’s fastest driver, Bill Elliott, by .863 seconds.

“I can tell you firsthand: We’re not cheating,” said Newman, who became just the second driver to win a Cup race at Kansas Speedway. The last two seasons Jeff Gordon won at the 1.5-mile track in Wyandotte County, while Newman was second twice.

“We don’t cheat,” added Newman, who won his eighth race of the season. “That’s basically it. They can think what they want. They can say what they want.”

They did, too.

“I’m not an engineer,” said Jeremy Mayfield, who rounded out Dodge’s trio of top three finishers. “But I know that if you’ve got 22 gallons of fuel in your car, and everybody’s got the same length fuel line and everybody’s got so much horsepower, it takes so much fuel to make that.”

Mike Ford, Bill Elliott’s crew chief, called any accusation of Newman cheating “purely speculation.”

“You can opt for fuel mileage or you can opt for power,” Ford said. “It’s very difficult to get both.”

Newman, who has won three of the last five Winston Cup events, seemed to find a way, though.

Ryan Newman does a spinout after winning the NASCAR Banquet 400. Newman earned his Winston Cup-leading eighth victory of the year Sunday at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan.

Newman went to the front for the first time on lap No. 240, after Mark Martin’s spin on the front stretch gave Newman a lead he would not relinquish.

After the day’s ninth caution, Elliott, who led 115 laps of the 267-lap race, couldn’t catch Newman.

Elliott didn’t make it to the media center after the race, but instead issued a statement.

“We had a good car, but it was just one of them days,” he said. “It was a good day, but we just couldn’t get there.”

Mayfield said that Elliott’s car clearly was the best.

“I think it’s pretty obvious who had the best car out there today,” Mayfield said.

But it didn’t matter.

“It’s easier to criticize the winner than it is to criticize the loser,” Newman said. “The car was good at the end, and that’s when we needed it.”

Ryan Newman celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Banquet 400. He won with an average speed of 121.630 mph Sunday at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan.

Newman might have taken the most heat for his fuel-conservation habits the day before from Gordon.

“The thing that definitely raises an eyebrow to me is that the No. 12 car (Newman) is one of the best engines out there, and yet has one of the best fuel mileages out there, too,” Gordon said Saturday. “And I don’t know how that happens.”

Perhaps it was because of Newman’s pit crew.

“Ryan Newman’s crew has won him more races than he has himself,” fourth-place finishing Tony Stewart said.

Newman said that wasn’t the case, and he was part of a team that had “no I in it.”

In response to Gordon’s guff, Newman said: “I think we answered that when we crossed the finish line.”

Gordon missed out on becoming the first driver ever to win the first three races at a new track.

“We were about a third-place car most of the day,” Gordon said after his third consecutive fifth-place finish. “I’m pretty happy with how things turned out.”

Winston Cup points leader Matt Kenseth probably wasn’t.

For the second straight race he had a low finish after his second wreck of the weekend made him miss more than 40 laps.

“Yeah, we’ve had a couple of tough weeks, that’s for sure,” said Kenseth, who finished 36th after starting 32nd in his back-up car. “It wasn’t really bad luck. It was poor driving by me and poor decisions with the car, so I can’t really blame it on luck.”

Kenseth’s points lead shrank from 354 to 259.

“Ultimately this weekend was 80 or 90 percent my fault,” said Kenseth, who got tangled with Michael Waltrip on the 68th lap. “When we did wreck, I still don’t really know what happened.

“I saw Michael wrecking, and I went a little lower to miss him. And instead of just staying on the gas and going by him, I thought I’d slow up a little bit more in case he came down the track. The next thing I knew the thing just spun out on me. I wasn’t even going fast, so I’m kind of puzzled with what happened.”

So, too, was Newman, who said of his race strategy, “It was as much luck as it was skill.”

But when asked directly after the race if he was running on fumes or how much gas he had left, Newman flashed a smile and said: “Doesn’t matter, does it?”

That all depends on whom you ask.