“I can’t tell from that angle, but it looks like Kasey just slid into me,” Martin said as he watched a replay of the accident.

Martin, who does not plan to run a full Nextel Cup schedule next season, vowed to return for another All-Star race in 2007.

“I’ll be here,” he promised.

Kyle Busch, Jeremy Mayfield, Jamie McMurray and Greg Biffle couldn’t avoid the carnage. Stewart did slide through, only to get hit by Mayfield’s careening car.

Irritated with the wreckage, Stewart drove by Mayfield and revved his engine in anger as he passed. Mayfield then stopped by to assure Stewart he wasn’t at fault.

“I just told him I didn’t have nothing to do with it,” Mayfield said. “We’re cool.”

Although Stewart returned to the track, his night ended early in the final 20-lap sprint when he ran into Matt Kenseth to send them both into the wall.

“He put me in the wall head-on,” Kenseth complained on his radio. “He must have drove across the bottom, and he just wrecked me. Then he flipped me the bird.”

Stewart vehemently disagreed.

“That’s a pretty demented view in my opinion,” Stewart said. “I think he screwed up on this one. If he thinks I did that and that was my fault, he’s screwed up in the head.”

The accident left just nine cars on the track for the final 17 laps. Johnson was the leader on the restart and pulled away to the easy victory.

The 90-lap race was broken into three segments — with the Red Hot Chili Peppers performing a short set between the first and second legs of the race in NASCAR’s attempt to give the event a true All-Star feeling.

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