RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – It’s becoming a common post-race scene in NASCAR’s top series: Dale Earnhardt Jr. celebrating a victory and at least one driver lamenting how Tony Stewart cost him a chance at winning.

This time, Stewart incurred the ire of four-time series champion Jeff Gordon, nudging him wide with 41 laps to go in Saturday night’s Chevy American Revolution 400 as a long sprint to the finish unfolded.

And while Earnhardt took the suspense out of the finish with a lights-out run to his third Nextel Cup victory of the season, Gordon was left fuming.

“We’re seeing it every weekend and you think a guy getting abused by the media and the drivers would start thinking a little bit more,” Gordon said after saving his car and hanging on to finish sixth.

“He had a much faster car, fresher tires, got inside of me and the position was his and he just drove straight into me and put me in the wall and about put himself in the wall,” Gordon said. “It cost us a top five.”

Stewart said his car slipped in some oil dry that had been put down after an earlier crash and that he wasn’t trying to ease Gordon aside.

“I had a top-three night until I ran into the No. 24,” he said.

But recent history isn’t working in Stewart’s favor.

The episode made it three straight races in which Stewart has had some explaining to do, and the second time he has had a run-in with Gordon.

Three weeks earlier at Talladega, Kurt Busch criticized the 2002 series champion for wild driving after Stewart hit Busch, starting a 10-car crash. Three of the cars were carried off the track on flatbed trucks.

NASCAR officials warned Stewart twice to calm down during that event.

, and Stewart responded by hitting Terry Labonte after the race while trying to take a shortcut to the pit lane to avoid debris on the track.

The following week, NASCAR summoned Stewart for a chat two days before the race, but Stewart banged both Gordon and Rusty Wallace during the race. Gordon went on to win, and Wallace said he wasn’t sure what Stewart’s problem was and that he wanted to “whip his rear end.”

Wallace and Stewart later made up, but even Stewart knew that Gordon would be less inclined to be so forgiving after their tangle Saturday.

“I’m sure Jeff thinks I tried to take him out,” he said. “But that’s the only incident we had all night. We had a pretty clean night. There were a lot of guys with body rubs and stuff. If contact gets you a suspension for a race or two, we’ll only have about 18 cars next week.”

Stewart has been a noted hothead since he arrived on the NASCAR scene, and has suggested often that the responsibilities of stardom outside the race car could eventually drive him back to racing Sprint cars.

“At least you’re allowed to race there,” he said.

AP-ES-05-16-04 1902EDT