Relentless Tony Stewart claims Sprint Cup

? Tony Stewart insisted he wasn’t a title contender when NASCAR’s championship race began.

When it became clear he actually was a viable threat, he kicked it into another gear and vowed to go for broke in his pursuit of Carl Edwards.

Did he ever.

Stewart used a powerful and relentless drive — some might suggest the best in NASCAR history — Sunday in the season finale to seize his third NASCAR championship. He overcame a hole in the grill of his Chevrolet, a rain delay, used debatable fuel strategy and made 118 passes on the track to win at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

That shows how bad I wanted to win this thing,” Stewart said. “When you’re going for a championship, you can’t hold anything back. I couldn’t leave anything on the table.”

Edwards, who started the race with a three-point lead in the standings, did everything he could from the minute he arrived in Florida. His Roush-Fenway Racing team put his Ford on the pole, he led a race-high 119 of the 267 laps and still finished a helpless second.

The two actually ended up tied in the final standings — a NASCAR first — but Stewart won the title based on his five victories, all in the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup championship — to Edwards’ one.

Stewart became the first owner/driver to win the championship since the late Alan Kulwicki in 1992, and the driver to end Jimmie Johnson’s record five-year title run. His last title was in 2005, the year before Johnson’s began his reign.

“Are you kidding me?” Stewart asked in Victory Lane in a pouring rain. “We said all week we’d just go out and win the race and didn’t have to worry about what (Edwards) did. If this doesn’t go down as one of the greatest championship battles in history, I don’t know what will.”

Edwards, who had a 4.9 average finish over the 10 Chase races, was disappointed but held his head high after the race.

“This night is about Tony Stewart. Those guys rose to the occasion, and they beat us fair and square,” Edwards said. “That is all I had. We came here and sat on the pole, led the most laps and Tony still managed. That’s it. That’s all I got at the end. That’s as hard as I can drive.”