Harvick pulled away during an 11-lap green-flag run to the finish to beat Kasey Kahne to the finish line by 1.491 seconds. The victory was Harvick’s second of the season, his second at Charlotte and the 21st of his career.

Kurt Busch ran third, followed by polesitter Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano. Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart, Clint Bowyer, Martin Truex Jr. and Marcos Ambrose completed the top 10.

On a night where the second half of the race produced non-stop action and plenty of contact, 10 spectators were injured when a TV camera drive line broke, three of them seriously enough to warrant transportation to a local hospital.

The speedway announced after the race that all injured  treated and released.

The pivotal moment in the race was a decision by Harvick and crew chief Gil Martin to come to pit road for two new tires after NASCAR called a debris caution on Lap 384 of 400. Kahne stayed out. In fact, he was the only driver to do so, and Harvick lined up beside the driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet for a restart on Lap 390 with a distinct advantage.

“It was a good strategy call there,” Harvick said. “The 5 stayed out, and we were able to have a little bit fresher tires and get in front of him on the restart… This is one of those nights where you just know going in that you’ve got to grind away, lap after lap to keep yourself on the lead lap and not make any mistakes…

“This is a long night. We’ve been here a lot of times and know that you just have to grind through mile after mile, keep your car running, don’t get tore up, don’t get a lap down, and you’re going to be somewhere around at the end. Everybody did that on our Budweiser Chevy tonight, and there we were at the end.”

For the third time this season on a 1.5-mile speedway, Kahne finished second with arguably the fastest car. Both he and crew chief Kenny Francis were surprised that Kahne was the only driver who stayed on the track during the final caution. Fresh rubber turned the tide in Harvick’s favor.

“We had a great car from the drop of the green, drove to the front from sixth,” said Kahne, who led a race-high 161 laps. “It was definitely our race to lose, especially those last 100 laps. We thought that some of the guys would stay out. I think there were three cars that had just pitted within the last couple laps, or five or six laps, and (we) just felt like they’d stay out, and that’d be a big enough buffer to someone who had two or four (new) tires, that we could get away.

“It didn’t happen. Harvick started right beside me and had two, and he held it flat through (Turns) 1 and 2, and I had to lift a little bit. I got a little free getting in, so I had to back off the gas, and when I went back down, he was in front of me. So that was the end of our race, and I had to make sure I got second from there.”

NASCAR’s longest race took an extraordinary turn on Lap 122 when a guide cable to the “CamCat,” the remote-control mobile camera that traverses the frontstretch, broke and fell across the track. Several cars sustained damage from running across the cable, most notably those of Ambrose and Kyle Busch, then the race leader.

A length of cable wrapped around Ambrose’s rear housing and severed a brake line. Contact with the fallen cable sliced open the front right quarter panel of Busch’s Toyota. NASCAR went off the pages of its own rule book under the exceptional circumstances and allowed all teams to repair their cars during a 15-minute break in the action.

The sanctioning body restored the running order before the cable broke, reinstating Ambrose, who lost four laps under repairs, to the lead lap for a restart on Lap 131. Busch’s team worked feverishly to reconstruct the damaged quarter panel with black Bear Bond tape.

Two red-flag periods totaling 27 minutes–the first for the broken cable, the second for repairs–took the race from daylight to dusk. Kyle Busch held the top spot after the Lap 131 restart, with brother Kurt Busch charging from sixth to second on the first restart lap.

The Busch brothers paced the field until Kenseth grabbed the lead from his teammate during a cycle of green-flag pit stops that began on Lap 171. From that point Kenseth dominated, until simultaneous engine failures in Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Chevrolet and Kyle Busch’s Toyota slowed the field on Lap 258.

Earnhardt’s calamity also was bad news for Greg Biffle, Travis Kvapil and Dave Blaney, who spun in the oil pouring from the No. 88 Chevy SS and wrecked, sidelining all three drivers.

Kenseth was the only driver who remained on the track under the ensuing yellow, and he surrendered the lead to Kahne seven laps after a restart on Lap 267. The decision to stay out cost Kenseth, who lost track position after pitting early on Lap 301, three laps before a caution for debris in Turn 1 interrupted a cycle of green-flag pit stops.

Jeff Gordon also lost a lap when the caution trapped him on pit road and was an innocent victim of three-wide racing after a spate of cautions to the race to a restart on Lap 325. Just past the star/finish line after the restart lap, contact between the cars of Mark Martin and Aric Almirola demolished those two machines as well as Gordon’s.

NASCAR red-flagged the race after Lap 326, and that proved disastrous to Kurt Busch, who Chevy lost power under the stoppage. Busch, who had wrested the lead from Kahne after a restart on Lap 319, surrendered the top spot to Harvick when his car wouldn’t start.

After a push from a safety truck, however, Busch’s car re-fired, and his crew changed the battery on pit road without losing a lap.

The fireworks were far from over. Jimmie Johnson’s spin on Lap 333 battered the No. 48 Chevy of the five-time champion, as well as the cars of Kenseth, Juan Pablo Montoya and Paul Menard.

That left Kahne and Harvick to fight for the lead, which Kahne took decisively on Lap 341, clearing Harvick to the outside through Turns 3 and 4. Kahne gave up the top with a green-flag pit stop on Lap 364, but regained it during the pit stop cycle before a debris caution on Lap 384 set up 11-lap dash to the finish.

Unsinkable Matt Kenseth capped a banner week for unsinkable Joe Gibbs Racing with a victory in Saturday night’s Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway with a substitute crew chief on his pit box—the unsinkable Wally Brown.

The past four days could hardly have been better for JGR, with Wednesday bringing a substantial reduction in penalties on appeal for an engine infraction Apr, 21 at Kansas. On Friday, Gibbs cars ran 1-2-3 in the Nationwide Series race at Darlington, and the organization followed that Saturday with a 1-2 finish from Kenseth and Denny Hamlin in the 11th NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race of the season.

Kenseth took the lead from JGR teammate Kyle Busch on Lap 355 of 367 and pulled away to win by 3.155 seconds over Hamlin, as Busch faded to sixth. Hamlin also had much to celebrate in his first full race back from a compression fracture to his first lumbar vertebra, sustained during a last-lap crash at Fontana, Calif., in late March.

It was a race of significant numbers. Jeff Gordon finished third in his 700th Cup start, all consecutive. Jimmie Johnson ran fourth and extended his series lead to a massive 44 points over seventh-place finisher Carl Edwards. In a race that saw just four drivers pace the field, Kyle Busch led 265 laps but faded to sixth at the finish, thanks to a cut tire on the final 30-lap green-flag run.

Journeyman Brown won his first race as a Cup crew chief, after serving with four different drivers before his one-week shot on the pit box with Kenseth, who will get regular crew chief Jason Ratcliff back next week at Charlotte after Ratcliff’s six-race suspension for an underweight connecting rod was reduced to one event on appeal.

But the day belonged to Kenseth, whose resilience under trying circumstances was emblematic of the organization he joined this season.

“Honestly, I’ve only dreamed about winning the Southern 500,” said Kenseth, who notched his first victory at Darlington, his third of the season and the 27th of his career. “This to me probably feels bigger than any win in my career. I really feel bad that Jason isn’t here. This is obviously his team and his effort, but Wally did a great job filling in.

“We had a fifth- or sixth-place car, fighting loose, (and) those last two adjustments (on pit road) were just awesome.”

For Hamlin, second place was the best he could have hoped for, given the strength of Kenseth’s car in the closing laps.

“For me, we kept grinding away,” Hamlin said, clearly tired from the effort of his first race back at one of NASCAR racing’s most demanding tracks. “Pit crew picked us up some spots, obviously, throughout the night.

“It was one of those days where we got our car better, pit crew picked us up positions, took us to the most optimum spot we could get to—and that was second.”

From a physical standpoint, Hamlin admitted the race took its toll.

“Really, it’s just like starting your season over,” he said. “To start it back over at Darlington for 500 miles, there’s some muscles that have gotten weak. I’ve gotten pretty sore and tired, mentally tired as well. We’ll have a couple of weeks really to rest until the next long event (Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte), and we’ll be good to go then.”

A caution for Regan Smith’s spin off Turn 2 on Lap 302 of 367—only the second yellow of the race—interrupted a cycle of green-flag pit stops. After Juan Pablo Montoya took a free pass as the highest scored lap car, and Harvick availed himself of a wave-around, there were 11 cars on the lead lap for a restart on Lap 309.

By then, Kyle Busch had led 218 laps and had dominated the race ever since he wrested the lead from his brother, polesitter Kurt Busch on Lap 74. But the pit stops on Lap 303 put the lead-lap cars on the edge of their fuel windows.

They need not have worried. On Lap 311, Casey Mears tangled with Kurt Busch and reigning series champion Brad Keselowski off Turn 4 to cause the third caution. All but the top-four cars came to pit road for fuel under the yellow, leaving Kyle Busch, Kenseth, Kasey Kahne and Gordon out front on slightly older tires.

Johnson was first off pit road with new tires and quickly moved to third. Busch fended off a challenge from Kahne right after the restart and held a lead of .850 seconds when an accident involving David Reutimann and Josh Wise brought out the fourth caution and gave the lead-lappers a chance to pit for tires.

Kahne briefly took the lead after a restart on Lap 333, but one lap later, Kahne’s Chevy slapped the wall near the apex of Turns 1 and 2 and the race went yellow for the fifth time.

The result was the same. Busch pulled away after the restart and opened a comfortable advantage, this time over Kenseth, only to have Kenseth run him down and pass him on Lap 355.

Hamlin, who practiced for 16 laps at Talladega, said afterwards that he was happy to be back in the car, and he thanked Brian Vickers and Mark Martin who filled in for him.

Hamlin said he didn’t experience discomfort once he was in the car, but it did hurt getting into and out of the car through the window. So, he will be entering and exiting the car through the roof.

The plan seems to be for Hamlin to start the race, and climb out of the car at the first caution. He said that he will keep himself out of harms way to ensure that he makes it to the first caution without causing one himself.

Hamlin and his team have practiced the driver swap with Brian Vickers several times. He says that they have it down to about a minute, which should be enough to keep them on the lead lap.

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Unfortunately I won’t be racing this weekend at Richmond. It kills me to not be in the car for my team and… twitpl.us/t/9JT

— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) April 24, 2013

Hamlin had hoped to be back in the car at Richmond.

Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano got together while racing for the win in the Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway. Hamlin’s car made hard contact with the inside wall.

Tests revelealed a fractured L1 vertebra that could sideline Hamlin for up to six weeks. Mark Martin and Brian Vickers have filled in for Hamlin in Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 11 Toyota.

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JGR President JD Gibbs said:

We’ve been real fortunate to have never been in this situation with the need to find someone to fill in for an injured driver. A lot goes into a decision like this but we are really pleased to have someone of the character and caliber of Mark Martin to fill in while Denny is out. Obviously we’re not exactly sure how long that is going to take, but Mark’s career speaks for itself and our team knows it will have the opportunity to compete for a win every week.

Martin, who currently shares the No. 55 Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota with Brian Vickers, will take over driving duties in the STP Gas Booster 400 at Martinsville Speedway.

Martin said:

I’m happy to have this opportunity to help out JGR, FedEx and Denny. Hopefully I can keep those guys up front and compete for wins while Denny heals up.

Vickers is expected to drive the No. 55 while Martin fills in for Hamlin.

Update: Martin will only fill in for Hamlin at Martinsville. He will return to the No. 55 in the NRA 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Vickers will then drive the No. 11.

J D Gibbs said:

Obviously having to find someone to fill in for Denny is not an ideal situation to have to be in and when you start a process like this you obviously begin to look at the drivers that are not only available but also able to drive for your race team and manufacturer. We were a bit premature in determining Mark’s status past Martinsville however. We’re real happy to have the opportunity to get Brian in our Cup cars and with him driving Nationwide for us we think we have some continuity there that is beneficial.

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Hamlin was able to climb out of the car on his own, but he immediately went down. He was airlifted to local hospital for observation. He spent the night at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Hamlin was diagnosed with a fractured L1 vertebra.

He was released on Monday — and walked out of the hospital under his own power — and was allowed to fly home.

Dr. Jerry Petty of Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates evaluated Hamlin. Joe Gibbs Racing issued the following statement on its Facebook page:

Dr. Petty determined that Hamlin will not require surgery, but will need time to properly heal, which is estimated around six weeks time. Dr. Petty will make the determination when Hamlin will be able to return to racing this season. No decision has been made on a replacement driver for Hamlin during his absence from the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

This news effectively ends Hamlin’s chances to win the Sprint Cup Series championship.

After his release from the hospital, Hamlin said he knew he was in trouble because he felt his back pop after the violent collision. He said he couldn’t breathe and is still having difficulty breathing.

Hamlin said that Logano has not reached out to him. He added that he made sure to give Logano plenty of room. But, he said:

I think he saw I was going to win and wasn’t going to let that happen.

For his part, Logano said:

I just thought we were racing hard, you know? It happens. You don’t ever want anyone to get hurt; you don’t ever want anything to happen, especially to Denny. We were racing really hard there at the end of the race. I wish there was a SAFER barrier down there, and I wish I knew before I made any comments on TV also.

Following the race Logano said:

He probably shouldn’t have done what he did last week (at Bristol), so that’s what he gets.

He later said he didn’t try to wreck Hamlin in “any way, shape, or form.”

Kerry Tharp, NASCAR Director of Communications, tweeted that “NASCAR will issue no penalties from last weekend’s events at [Auto Club Speedway].

While no announcement has been made as to a replacement, Elliott Sadler, who drives for JGR in the Nationwide Series, seems like a logical choice to replace Hamlin.

Yes, it was Busch’s 25th victory in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Yes, Busch broke a 31-race drought. Yes, Busch gave Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota their first victory at Auto Club Speedway.

Yes, race runner-up Dale Earnhardt Jr. leaves California with the Cup series lead, 12 points ahead of 23rd-place finisher Brad Keselowski.

But it was the banging between polesitter Hamlin and Logano — the renewal of a feud that started last Sunday in Bristol — as well as an angry confrontation between Stewart and Logano on pit road that stole attention from Busch’s milestone win. Stewart took umbrage at a block by Logano on the final restart with 11 laps left in the 200-lap event.

“I did win the race today,” Busch quipped. “That might be a story… They (Hamlin and Logano) were so focused on each other that they left the door open.”

His momentum broken by the block, Stewart fell through the field and finished 22nd. Earnhardt was second when caution froze the field on the final lap. Logano was credited with third, followed by Carl Edwards and Kurt Busch, who overcame a brush with the wall and a pit road penalty to post his second straight top five.

Hamlin nosed hard into the inside wall and was credited with a 25th-place finish. The driver of the No. 11 Toyota was airlifted to a local hospital as a precautionary measure. A helicopter was used because of heavy post-race traffic outside the speedway.

As Logano put it later, the driver of the No. 22 Penske Racing Ford was simply trying to do whatever was necessary to win the race. That applied both to the block of Stewart and the battle with Hamlin.

“Racing for the lead — going for the win,” Logano said. “That’s what you’ve got to do… Tony was just upset about a restart, that I was racing him really hard on the bottom trying to make sure I protected my spot. What I was doing actually was I was racing the 18 (Kyle Busch) on the restart and he was spinning his tires.

“The rule is you can’t beat him to the start finish line, so I am pedaling it which gave Tony the run to go underneath me. I wanted to block that because I knew, if he put me three-wide, that would be the end of my race and I wouldn’t win. I was smart enough to realize that. Then I had to just do what I had to do to get to the front and try to win the race.”

Stewart had a substantially different view of the incident.

“For a guy that’s been complaining about how everyone else is driving here, and him to do that, it’s a double standard,” Stewart said. “He makes the choice. He makes the decision to run us down there (to the apron), and when you run a driver down there, you take responsibility for what happens after that.

“He’s a tough guy on pit road, as soon as one of his crew guys gets in the middle of it. Until then, he’s a scared little kid.”

A caution on lap 170 for Marcos Ambrose’s blown left-rear tire followed almost immediately a round of green-flag pit stops and wiped out Busch’s five-second lead over Harvick. That set up a restart on Lap 175 with Busch on the outside and Harvick beside him in the inside lane.

Harvick, however, failed to launch on the restart, allowing Kahne to move into second with Stewart behind him. One lap later, Mark Martin’s spin off Turn 2 brought out the seventh caution and bunched the field for a restart on Lap 181.

Kyle Busch pulled away once again, but the engine in Clint Bowyer’s Toyota exploded on Lap 185, giving cars running ninth on back a chance to pit for fresh tires in hopes of gaining ground on a final charge to the finish.

Kyle Busch paced the field to a restart on Lap 190 with Logano beside him, despite overheating issues that threatened his chances for a strong finish. Stewart was third and Kurt Busch fourth when the field took the green.

Stewart was the biggest loser on the restart, thanks to the block Logano threw on the No. 14 car as the field stormed through Turn 1. Logano got the better of Kyle Busch on lap 194, as Hamlin streaked through the field on fresh tires to move into second.

Just past the finish line on Lap 199, Hamlin moved to the outside of Logano, and the drivers banged doors repeatedly until the contact sent Hamlin spinning and Logano into the outside wall, allowing Kyle Busch to steal the win.

“This is one of those tracks that, as a driver, you feel like you really need to win at,” said Kahne, who snagged the lead on a final restart with 40 laps left and held off both Kyle Busch and Keselowski in Sunday’s Food City 500.

“We’ve been trying for a long time. To pull it off, I feel is a big accomplishment for our guys and myself. There are so many things that are thrown at you when you come to this place. We’d been fast here other times and not able to finish the deal.”

Kahne, now seventh in the points standings, had finished no better than fifth in any of his previous 10 Cup races at Bristol.

The final restart came after Kahne’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson blew a tire, bringing out the race’s 10th caution.

Prior to the final green-flag run, Kahne and Keselowski had staged a furious short-track duel that rekindled memories of the door-to-door racing that made Bristol famous.

“I’m (thinking) how can I get by and he’s (thinking) how can I hold this guy off,” Kahne said. “I reeled him in, but he was driving into the corners so hard, I really couldn’t do anything on the bottom. I bumped him a few times. He was sideways a few times trying to hold us back.

“I felt like we got a really good restart, got the lead and, from there, it was just momentum and trying to drive away.”

Keselowski knew he was in trouble after spinning wheels on the final restart and watching Kahne set sail.

“I don’t think I had anything for Kasey. I don’t know if anyone did,” said Keselowski, the defending race champion who finished third. “He was so good through the middle, really everywhere. He was kind of in a league of his own.”

Kahne credited his team, led by crew chief Kenny Francis.

“It’s fun to come to pit road and break even or gain spots,” he said. “The guys have just been nailing it on pit road.”

Not everyone made up ground in the pits.

Busch, who won the pole in track record time on Friday, posted the fastest laps in both of Saturday’s practice sessions and then won Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series event, led the first 55 laps before a pit-road speeding violation under caution shuffled him back to 32nd. He was undaunted in his recovery, clawing his way back to 16th in the next 40 laps and moving to second behind teammate Denny Hamlin on Lap 155 after the race’s fourth caution.

“We battled back. I wish I could have kept up with the 5 (Kahne), but he took off and left us all,” Busch said.

Hamlin led 117 of the first 189 laps before surrendering the lead in the pits to teammate Matt Kenseth, who suffered his own misfortune when race leader Jeff Gordon blew a right front tire on Lap 391. Gordon climbed the track with his tire going down and Kenseth had nowhere to go, slamming into the rear of Gordon.

“Not a lot either one of us could do about that,” said Kenseth, resigned to a 35th-place finish.

Joey Logano, who started 10th, had been making steady progress and was challenging Gordon for the lead on Lap 348 when he tangled with Hamlin, his former JGR teammate. That led to a post-race exchange between Logano, Hamlin and team members.

Asked if he and Hamlin had a problem, Logano replied: “If we didn’t, we do now.”

Keselowski’s third-place finish vaulted him to the lead in the Sprint Cup point standings, nine points ahead of Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finished sixth after qualifying 32nd.

Johnson, who entered as the points leader, finished 22nd after running in the top 10 most of the day and fell to third in the standings. Kurt Busch finished fourth, his best showing for Furniture Row Racing, and Clint Bowyer was fifth.

According to NASCAR:

Following the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event last Sunday at Phoenix International Raceway, Denny Hamlin made some disparaging remarks about the on-track racing that had taken place that afternoon. While NASCAR gives its competitors ample leeway in voicing their opinions when it comes to a wide range of aspects about the sport, the sanctioning body will not tolerate publicly made comments by its drivers that denigrate the racing product.

Ryan Pemberton, vice president of competition at NASCAR, said that Hamlin’s comments were different from constructive criticism. He called them “damaging.”

After the race, Hamlin said:

I don’t want to be the pessimist, but it did not race as good as our Generation 5 cars. This is more like what the Generation 5 was at the beginning. The teams hadn’t figured out how to get the aero balance right. Right now, you just run single-file and you cannot get around the guy in front of you. [If] you would have placed me in 20th-place with 30 (laps) to go, I would have stayed there — I wouldn’t have moved up. It’s just one of those things where track position is everything.

Hamlin also said that despite starting in the back and finishing third, he did not pass a lot of cars on the racetrack.

While those comments don’t seem to be too outlandish, NASCAR has made it clear that it will not tolerate public negative comments about the racing.

In November of 2011, Brad Keselowski was fined $25,000 for making disparaging comments at a NASCAR Hall of Fame event about NASCAR’s move to fuel injection. At that time, Keselowski said:

We’re not doing this because it’s better for the teams. I don’t think we’re really going to save any gas. It’s a media circus, trying to make you guys happy so you write good stories. It gives them something to promote. We’re always looking for something to promote, but the honest answer is it does nothing for the sport except cost the team owners money. Cars on the street are injected with real electronics, not a throttle body (like in NASCAR). So we’ve managed to go from 50-year-old technology to 35-year-old technology. I don’t see what the big deal is.

In the summer of 2010, Denny Hamlin and Ryan Newman were also fined for disparaging comments they made about NASCAR.

This time around, however, Hamlin is refusing to pay the fine and he will appeal. On NASCAR Now, Hamlin said:

Ultimately, I’m not OK with it. This is the most upset and angry I’ve been in a really, really long time about anything … anything that relates to NASCAR. The truth is what the truth is. I don’t believe in this. I’m never going to believe in it. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not going to pay the fine. If they suspend me, they suspend me. I don’t care at this point.

Per the NASCAR rulebook, failure to pay a fine can result in suspension, and the money can be deducts from race winnings.

Update: Denny Hamlin has dropped his appeal of the fine. Hamlin tweeted:

After a lot of thought I have decided not to appeal the fine NASCAR has issued. Dragging myself, my team and NASCAR through the mud for the next 2 weeks would not be good for anyone. I firmly believe I am in the right on this issue and will stand behind my decision not to pay. I understand NASCAR will do what they feel is necessary based on my decision. Thanks to all of my fans and peers who have supported me in this decision. I look forward to putting it to rest.

— Denny Hamlin (@dennyhamlin) March 14, 2013

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As Denny Hamlin put it, Carl Edwards is “relevant again” after winning Sunday’s Subway Fresh Fit 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Phoenix International Raceway in a green-white-checkered-flag finish that took the race four laps past its posted distance of 312 laps.

In beating Jimmie Johnson to the finish line by 1.024 seconds, Edwards broke a winless streak that had reached 70 races, dating to Mar. 6, 2011 at Las Vegas. Remarkably, Edwards broke another 70-race drought at the one-mile track in the Sonoran desert when he won at Phoenix in November 2010.

Behind Edwards and Johnson, Denny Hamlin ran third, making the most of a daredevil move that cut the backstretch dogleg on the last lap and got his No. 11 Toyota past the No. 2 Ford of reigning series champion Brad Keselowski, who came home fourth.

It was Keselowski, though, driving a Ford after Penske Racing’s between-season switch from Dodge, who gave Edwards the push that propelled him to the front on the final restart on Lap 315.

For his part, Edwards hopes the momentum of his 20th career victory continues throughout the season.

“When you’re struggling, it seems like time slows down,” Edwards said after being told of Hamlin’s “relevant” comment. “You’re working harder, you’re trying more, you’re questioning yourself more. … (Last year) was one of the longest years of my life, to work that hard and not get the victories.

“I’m very, very happy to be back in the mix here. A victory is huge for so many reasons. Last year we didn’t make the Chase. For me to sit home, while everybody was at the Chase stuff in Vegas—that was a little bit of a shock to me. I did not like that at all.

“So to get a victory helps us be in a better position for the Chase. It just feels good to win. So, yeah, I hope  Denny’s right. I hope we’re relevant or more than relevant all year. I hope we dominate this thing.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished fifth, losing his winning chances when he spun his tires on the penultimate restart on Lap 243. Clint Bowyer, Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton rounded out the top 10.

Edwards No. 99 Ford Fusion led 67 straight green-flag laps after the restart on Lap 243, but Ken Schrader’s crash on Lap 309 sent the race to overtime and gave the crew chiefs of the leading cars nervous moments as they tried to recalculate fuel mileage.

The top-14 cars stayed out for a restart on Lap 315, and Edwards had enough gas to complete two laps and win the race.

On the last two restarts, Johnson felt Edwards played fast and loose with the zone, delineated by red marks on the wall, within which the leader is required to accelerate.

“I felt like Carl didn’t follow the restart protocol and was slower than the pace car on his last two restarts, and it gives the leader a huge advantage when that happens,” Johnson said. “You’re supposed to wait until you get between the two lines and take off, and this was all going on before (the restart zone).”

Naturally enough, Edwards had a completely different view of the restart. Though Johnson said he made a point of maintaining pace car speed, Edwards thought Johnson was speeding up as the cars approached the start.

“Usually the guy in second hangs back a little bit, and he pulled up there and I thought, ‘Why’s he doing that?’” Edwards said. “Yeah, maybe I was slowing down, but I wasn’t trying to. I thought he was speeding up. I thought it was pretty genius what he was doing, because it kind of got me off of my game.

“But then, when I went, I think he maybe wasn’t looking at me or something, because he waited just a little bit too long to go. But, truthfully, that was not by design. I was not trying to do anything tricky. I thought he was.”

Danica Patrick’s hard crash on Lap 185 caused the sixth caution of the race. The right front tire on Patrick’s No. 10 Chevrolet SS exploded without warning as the car rolled through Turn 4. The car bounced off the outside wall into the path of David Ragan’s Ford.

The resulting collision ripped the driver’s-side door off Patrick’s car and knocked the protective foam out of the door frame. Patrick walked away from the wreck but ended the day in 39th place.

That caution, however, proved a boon to her former car owner, Earnhardt, who was first off pit road for a restart on Lap 194. Earnhardt’s No. 88 Chevy took a liking to the clean air and remained on point, pacing teammate Johnson as the Hendrick Motorsports pair opened a one-second lead over Matt Kenseth in third.

Forty laps into the green-flag, Earnhardt had widened his edge over Johnson to .928 seconds before the yellow flag flew on Lap 236 for David Gilliland’s hard contact with the outside wall in Turn 1, the result of another blown right front tire.

That caution, the seventh of the race, put Kyle Busch back on the lead lap. Busch went a lap down after spinning into the Turn 2 wall on Lap 48 and persevered until he was awarded a free pass as the highest-scored lapped car when Gilliland wrecked.

Busch had started at the rear of the field because of an eleventh-hour engine change Sunday morning. The engine in his No. 18 Camry suffered a part failure during warmup, the result of a reassembly error.