Brett Griffin will take over spotting duties from Ty Norris, general manager with MWR. Griffin has served as a Nationwide Series spotter and business manager for Elliott Sadler.

Griffin lost his job as Jeff Burton’s sponsor when Sadler announced that he would not be returning to Richard Childress Racing next season.

Bowyer said:

 I like Brett. We’ve been friends off the race track for a long time. I’ve got a lot of confidence in him. I talked to Jeff Burton a lot about him, and he was like, “Hire him–hire him in the morning. Hire him right now.” I’ve just got a lot of confidence in him. I don’t think it’ll be a transition at all because we know each other so well, and he does such a good job where he is. I’ve listened to him a lot, and most of the things I ask for, he does. I wanted to make sure Ty was OK with it, because, first and foremost, Ty helped me get where I’m at in so many different levels. I didn’t want to take anything from him. If he wanted to be a part of that, I wasn’t about to make a change until next year. But the opportunity came up, and Ty kind of wants to focus on his job and make sure all three cars are running well. I think it’ll just be a good thing.

Jeff Gordon, who also gambled on fuel, finished more than eight seconds behind Edwards.

Jamie McMurray, Clint Bowyer, and Greg Biffle rounded out the top 5.

Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Martin Truex Jr, Matt Kenseth and David Reutimann finished sixth through 10th, respectively.

Notables: Jeff Burton (13th), Jimmie Johnson (15th), Tony Stewart (16th), Denny Hamlin (17th), Dale Earnhardt Jr (20th).

Give a call to Juan Pablo Montoya who was running near the front all day, before an incident with David Gilliland ended his day.

Montoya said of the incident:

I was running high the lap before and he went inside of me. He ran straight to the wall and I tried to get away. He put me into the wall. So I went into [Turn 1] and I punted him just a little bit to say, ‘Hey, you’re running like 50 laps behind.’ I hit him a little bit. If I had wanted to wreck him, I would have wrecked him.

Then, Montoya got to the inside of Gilliland and passed him. As the two came off the corner, Gilliland hit Montoya hard in the rear sending him into the outside wall. Montoya suffered heavy damage. Gilliland was later parked by NASCAR.

Gilliland said:

I meant to get him loose, I didn’t mean to wreck him and ruin both of our days. It was just one of those racing deals, you know. I wanted to come down behind him and I just mis-judged and clipped him there.

Watch the video here.