“In my opinion, it was just hard racing,” Earnhardt said during Tuesday’s national conference call. “The guy is leading the race, he’s trying to do what he can to win.”

Stewart didn’t agree.

The three-time Cup champion cut off Logano’s car on pit road after the race and went after him physically before being separated by crew members and officials. He then went on a verbal tirade against the 22-year-old Penske Racing driver.

“He has that right, he has the choice to do that,” Stewart said of blocking. “If he ever turns down across in front of me again, I don’t care what lap it is, he won’t make it through the other end of it.

“I’m tired of these guys doing that stuff. Especially out of a kid that’s been griping about everybody else and then he does that the next week. He sent Denny [Hamlin] to the hospital and screwed our day up.”

Stewart, who finished 22nd, was referring to a last-lap crash involving Logano and Hamlin racing for the lead. Hamlin, who wrecked Logano a week earlier at Bristol, suffered a compression fracture in his lower back when his car hit a concrete inside retaining wall and will miss up to five races.

Earnhardt understands there are some who get more upset about blocking than others. He’s just not one of them.

“Every driver is going to have a different opinion,” said Earnhardt, who took advantage of the last-lap crash to finish second and move into the points lead. “I might block in certain situations. I would expect and accept to be blocked in certain situations.

“But you’ve got to give me racetrack. You’ve got to give me somewhere to run. You can’t just run me up into the fence. You’ve got to give me a lane. If you give me a reasonable amount of racetrack to race on, then I really can’t complain in regards to what you’re trying to do to maintain the position.”

Earnhardt said the time of the race also is a factor when it comes to blocking.

“Is it time to be blocking?” he said. “Is the position that important at that moment in time? Again, everybody will have a different opinion. But when somebody blocks me, I’m not blown away by the notion.

“You know, I’m not going to say that I’ve never blocked anybody because I have, and you do, you will. Being in certain situations, that’s your only alternative. But you’ve got to give people racing room or expect to get turned around or expect to make a few people upset.”

Stewart caused a 25-car pileup in which Earnhardt suffered a concussion that sidelined him for two Chase races defending the lead in the closing lap at Talladega last fall.

Stewart, who has been outspoken about blocking several times the past few years, apologized after the race.

“I just screwed up,” he said. “I turned down and cut across Michael [Waltrip] and crashed the whole field. It was my fault, blocking and trying to stay where I was at.”

Logano never got a chance to discuss what happened with Stewart. He said after the race he had to slow down so as not to jump the race leader on the restart, and that when he did Stewart was able to get a jump on him.

“I had to throw the block there,” Logano said. “That was the race for the lead. I felt if [Stewart] got underneath me, that was going to be the end of my opportunity to win the race.”

Logano said he planned to tell Stewart the same thing when they spoke. Asked if he was willing to talk to Logano, Stewart said, “Hell no.”

“After he threw the water bottle at me like a little girl, we’ll go at it now,” he said.

Stewart also referred to Logano as a spoiled rich kid who never worked a day in his life. That brought up another issue that Earnhardt discussed in relation to how his 12-year-old niece Karsyn has many of the same financial advantages Logano had as she pursues a career in racing.

“Hopefully, she’s talented enough, no matter what your background or what your path is to where you are … if you have talent, you belong, and you earn respect through that talent,” he said. “If you’re really good at your job and really good at what you do, it won’t matter how you got there.”

Opinions will vary on that just as they will on blocking. Stewart’s teammate, Ryan Newman, called blocking a “chicken way to drive.”

“It’s just something I don’t do,” he said. “If you’ve got a run on me, take it. If I can get through the corner better than you, then we’ll race, but blocking is an IndyCar form or F1 form or an open-wheel type move it seems like.

“It’s not to say they don’t do it in NASCAR; obviously they do. But to me, it’s just a chicken way of driving and not very respectful for the guys around you. You’re there to race. You’re not there to block.”

Newman didn’t know if Stewart and Logano had talked or planned to before Sunday’s race at Martinsville, but he said you have to be aware if they’re around each other on the half-mile track where contact is expected.

“You have to know what’s going on and watch out for the dramas, but at the same time I have a race of my own to run, and a part of that is watching out for what’s going on, whether it’s something that’s carried over from the past few weeks or something that has happened that day,” Newman said. “Going to have to keep tabs on who turns who or who’s angry or where’s everybody at on their scorecards as you go through a race like Martinsville sometimes.”

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Kenseth knows a bit about risk after his offseason move to Joe Gibbs Racing, and this latest gamble paid off with his third victory in Vegas.

Kenseth won on his 41st birthday in just his third start for his new team, barely holding off Kasey Kahne at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for his 25th career victory Sunday.

“I was real nervous all day,” Kenseth said. “(Kahne) had the best car. I told (crew chief) Jason (Ratcliff) with about 12 to go that I was sorry we were going to lose. We were just too tight. … We didn’t have the fastest car there, but we had it where we needed it to be.”

Kenseth took charge by taking only fuel on the final pit stop during caution while almost everybody else replaced two tires. He took the lead and held onto it, using his veteran savvy — and a few screamed instructions at his new spotter — to keep Kahne’s impressive Chevrolet behind him to the finish.

The frequently laid-back Kenseth celebrated with uncommon vigor after his JGR Toyota crossed the line. He’s still getting comfortable with his new teammates after leaving Roush Fenway Racing in the highest-profile driver move of the offseason, joining Gibbs after 13 seasons with RFR.

“I’m not a huge goal person, but my goal was to win, and to win early,” Kenseth said. “Nobody has put any pressure on me except for myself, but I also know that Coach hired me to come in there, climb in that car and win races. You certainly want to do that, and you don’t want to disappoint people. I’m glad we got a win, but it’s still only Week 3. I feel like this is the beginning.”

Pole-sitter Brad Keselowski finished third, with Kenseth’s teammate, Kyle Busch, in fourth and Carl Edwards fifth. Jimmie Johnson, the overall points leader, was sixth and Dale Earnhardt Jr. seventh.

Defending Vegas champion Tony Stewart finished 11th, while Gibbs driver Denny Hamlin was 15th after an eventful week featuring a $25,000 fine from NASCAR for criticizing the new Gen-6 race car.

The win was the 50th for Toyota in Sprint Cup Series competition. Kenseth is just the third NASCAR driver to win on his birthday, joining Cale Yarborough — who did it twice — and Busch.

“I showed them a fake ID when they hired me,” Kenseth said with a laugh. “Told them I was 28, going to be 29 this year.”

Kenseth has won at least one race in 11 of his 14 full seasons in the Sprint Cup series, but the first 13 were all in Fords with Roush Fenway, the team that gave him his break in NASCAR and fostered his development into a likely Hall of Famer. Kenseth’s decision to leave for a seat on Gibbs’ team was an open secret for much of last season, although the veteran star never really explained his move.

“I had a lot of confidence after our first meeting and decided to go do this, and just had a great feeling about it, and still do,” Kenseth said.

Gibbs had his own worries before the race after a rough start to the season for Toyota. Kenseth and Busch both had serious engine trouble at Daytona two weeks ago.

“Lots of times, a victory, the thrill of it, depends on kind of what happens leading up to it,” Gibbs said. “We’ve had a tough couple of weeks, as everybody knows. … In tough times, everybody bands together around our place. We started fighting, and we worked our way out of some tough things.”

The 400-mile race was the first real test for NASCAR’s new Gen-6 car on the intermediate tracks they’re built to race. Although Hamlin commanded the week’s headlines with his pessimism amplified by the NASCAR fine, most drivers were curious how the Gen-6 would work in its ideal 1.5-mile environment.

Any drivers who still think it’s too tough to pass in the new car must not have been watching Busch, who made two lengthy charges up to early leads, doing it both before and after a pit-row speeding penalty dropped him back to 18th.

“I just hate it for my team,” said Busch, a Las Vegas native and graduate of nearby Durango High School. “We had by far the best car in practice. I don’t know where that went. Today was a different day. The worst Gibbs car ended up winning the race. It’s funny how this game works.”

Busch, who finished second in Saturday’s Nationwide Series race, charged through the field with impressive ease and took the lead out of a restart with a daredevil move on the apron with 102 laps to go. He went three wide and got underneath Kahne while kicking up dust well below the white line.

Kahne set the qualifying speed record on the Vegas track last year, but rain wiped out qualifying this week. He reclaimed the lead and held it until Kenseth nosed ahead out of another restart with 36 laps left when Kahne had trouble getting out of pit row, nearly hitting Stewart.

“I had an unbelievable car throughout the whole race,” Kahne said. “We just came out, I think, sixth (out of the pit). Tough to say we would have got by him anyway.

“I had a great day. I drove so hard every single lap today, and that’s just the new Gen-6 car. It was a lot of fun. I love it.”

The Gen-6 is still a work in progress, however. Several drivers reported various problems with their cars early on, with Clint Bowyer and Stewart both dropping far back in the opening laps. After three days of chilly weather in the desert, warmer temperatures Sunday changed the track’s feel, and teams struggled to adjust to the slickness.

Danica Patrick, the pole winner two weeks ago at Daytona, struggled with her car from the start, going two laps down by the 60th lap and later getting penalized for a tire violation. She finished 33rd.

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