Stewart send message at 'Dega; more notebook

TALLADEGA, Ala. (AP) -- Tony Stewart delivered a tongue-in-cheek message to fans who had been clamoring for some bang-'em-up wrecks.

Happy now?

"Honestly, I think if we haven't crashed at least 50 percent of the field by the end of the race, we need to extend the race until we crash at least 50 percent of the cars," Stewart said after Sunday's race at Talladega Superspeedway. "It's not fair to these fans to see any more wrecks than that, any more torn-up cars. I mean, we still had over half the cars running at the end, and it shouldn't be that way."

Barely over half. Ten drivers were knocked out by accidents, including a nine-car pileup Sunday that swept up Stewart with four laps to go and brought out the yellow flag.

Add on the mechanical problems, and only 23 of the 43 drivers managed to stay on the track for the entire 194 laps in a race won by Brad Keselowski.

So much for that month-long stretch of caution-free - boring? - racing. The Sprint Cup Series hadn't had a multi-car crash since Martinsville Speedway, five races ago. The last six had been uncharacteristically clean with few yellow flags.

Talladega took care of that, with five cautions for a total of 24 laps. And Stewart made his point, too.

"I'm upset that we didn't crash more cars," said Stewart, who finished 24th. "That's what we're here for. I feel bad if I don't spend at least $150,000 in torn-up race cars going back to the shop. We've definitely got to do a better job at that."

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/racing/05/06/talladega.notebook.ap/index.html#ixzz1uD7lFZ7o