Race Report.(Motorsports)

Joe Gibbs has endured some tough weekends in Dallas, but nothing like this: NASCAR took one of his Chevrolets for being illegal, another qualified on the pole for the Samsung/Radio Shack 500, then both dropped out. It makes those fumbles and interceptions at Texas Stadium pale by comparison, doesn't it?

Officials seized Tony Stewart's car on Friday when they found the area from the rear window to the spoiler obscenely wrong. Instead of letting crew chief Greg Zipadelli fix it, NASCAR held it and will send it to their R&D Center to study what the team had done.

``The 20 car was not in a condition to pass inspection,'' said NASCAR president Mike Helton. ``It didn't fit the templates.'' Helton said NASCAR took the car away because it was way off. ``I'm not going to speculate on how it got that way.''

Teammate Bobby Labonte won the pole (not all secrets should be transferred from one car to the other in multi-car teams) and Stewart qualified 22nd in a backup car and neither ran especially well. Labonte crashed after 260 laps and Stewart blew up at 293. Stewart fell from third in points to seventh, Labonte from eighth to 11th.

Mindful of perhaps another PR disaster, Zipadelli took the fall. ``It's something NASCAR didn't like and there's a rule,'' he said. ``I don't have much to stand on. It's nobody's fault but ours. It's a self-inflicted distraction.''

As for the driver and owner: ``The cars all look the same from where I sit,'' Stewart said. ``I'm in control of three things: a steering wheel, a shifter and pedals.'' Gibbs ...