Denny Hamlin had just whipped the field to win Sunday’s Pennsylvania 500, and he was talking about all the valuable lessons he’s learned in his rookie season of Nextel Cup competition.

“It’s all about patience,” Hamlin said. “Tony has really talked to me about it over the past few weeks.”

Tony who?

Tony Stewart?

Hamlin’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, and the guy who once again during the race exacted his own brand of instant justice by causing a wreck that very likely ended Carl Edwards’ hopes of making the Chase for the Nextel Cup, even when Edwards had nothing to do with the incident Stewart was reacting to?

“It’s an oxymoron, I know,” Hamlin said.

Right, and chip off the first three letters of that word and you get a good description for what the reigning Cup champion has been driving like.

“I expect to be raced the way I race other people,” Stewart said after he was involved in an incident, for the second straight week, that wouldn’t have happened if he’d simply not decided to act like Judge Judy in an orange suit.

“I think I’m pretty fair,” Stewart said. “Ask some veterans and ask the guys that I run up front with every week and I think I’m a pretty fair driver to those guys. If I’m wrong on that, I’ll quit. … I’ll retire tomorrow.”

Substitute “smart” for “fair” in that statement, and Stewart would be looking at the shortest farewell tour in history.

Last week at New Hampshire, Ryan Newman had fresh tires and was looking to get a lap back by passing Stewart. But since Newman had made himself tough to pass earlier in the race, Stewart decided not to give him an inch. Both drivers wound up wrecking.

Sunday at Pocono, Stewart and Clint Bowyer were racing for position. Bowyer, without question, got too high and crowded Stewart, who scrubbed the outside wall.

Stewart is absolutely right to say Bowyer was being too aggressive for it to be so early in the race.

But four cars ended up with a bad day because Stewart wasn’t willing to consider that Bowyer might have simply overdriven the corner and made a mistake. Instead of walking up to Bowyer at Indianapolis in two weeks and saying, “Hey, rookie, here’s why what you did at Pocono was a bad thing,” Stewart went for the immediate lesson in “give and take.”