He took the lead for good on a late restart and ran away from the field in the closing laps to win Sunday’s Quicken Loans 400. The No. 16 Ford driver won his second straight race here and the 19th of his career. Four of those victories have come at MIS.

“It’s definitely a special day,” Biffle said after delivering Ford Motor Co. its 1,000th victory in NASCAR’s three national touring series. “Just super-excited for Ford and sure excited to be No. 1,000.”

The win secured Biffle a berth in the 2014 NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race and moved him up a spot to eighth in the standings.

Second a week ago at Pocono, Biffle led the pack to the restart on lap 173 and outran Martin Truex Jr. to stay out front. He led a race-best 48 laps.

Owner Jack Roush’s operations center is in suburban Detroit and he considers MIS his home track. He was beaming almost as broadly as his driver.

“We expect to be at our best when we come to MIS and I am glad we could pull it off,” Roush said. “I was a little nervous for a minute there, but I am glad it worked out and glad we could give Ford its 1,000th win.”

Sprint Cup Series points leader Jimmie Johnson was gaining on Biffle in the final laps but a cut right front tire took him off the track with two laps to go.

Kevin Harvick finished second and Truex, Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart rounded out the top five.

Johnson took second a few laps before his misfortune and Harvick backed out of the throttle to hold on to at least a third-place finish.

“It was the third set of tires we had and they felt a little wobbly,” he said. “We just wanted to hold our track position.”

Biffle still was impressed with Johnson, whom he finished second to a week ago at Pocono.

“The guy was 10 (on the restart) and was catching me with 10 to go,” Biffle said. “That’s a fast race car.

“We beat the 48 today and that says a lot. He was really, really fast.”

Johnson ended the day 28th to wrap up a tough day for Hendrick Motorsports. None of the racing giant’s four entries cracked the top 25.

Pole winner Carl Edwards, who trailed Johnson by 51 points at the start of the race, cut 20 points off the deficit by finishing eighth.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. took the lead near the halfway point and appeared strong, but a blown engine ended his race on lap 131.

“It made a lot of damage there when it broke,” he said after leading 34 laps at the track where he ended his 143-race dry spell a year ago. “I’m not sure they’re going to be able to figure out what happened.”

Jamie McMurray led 21 laps but fell out of contention when he blew a right front tire on lap 167.

The day’s worst-looking wreck came shortly after the midway point when Kasey Kahne struck the wall near turn 2. The car caught fire as Kahne was getting out, but he stuck his arm back inside to trigger the fire-suppression system. He was not hurt.

Kurt Busch started on the outside of the front row and led the first 21 laps but spun and smacked the turn 2 wall two laps later.

Stewart ran his streak of top-seven finishes to four straight races and jumped from 13th to 10th in the standings.

There were showers after Saturday’s Nationwide Series race and NASCAR gave crews a competition caution 20 laps in to assess tire wear on the clean surface.

The Sprint Cup Series continues next Sunday when drivers run the first road course of the season in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway.

A week after a penalty for jumping the final restart at Dover knocked Johnson out of a near-certain victory, Johnson absolutely scorched the field in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Party in the Poconos 400, beating Greg Biffle to the finish line by 1.208 seconds.

The win was Johnson’s third of the season, his third at the Tricky Triangle and the 63rd of his career. Johnson increased his series lead over second-place Carl Edwards (18th Sunday) to a staggering 51 points after 14 races.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran third, followed by Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman. Kyle Busch, Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano completed the top 10.

“What a race car!” Johnson said after climbing from the No. 48 Chevrolet in Victory Lane. “Not only a great race car but an engine. We had fuel mileage and plenty of power. It was awesome on the straightaways today to be able to do what I wanted around other cars.

“So hats off to chassis, aero and the engine shop for this awesome race car.”

You might think winning at Pocono for the first time since he swept both races here in 2004 might assuage the sting of last week’s penalty. You’d be wrong.

“No, but it’s OK,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t make up for much, but we know we’re a great race team. Things won’t keep us down. We had a great race car today and had a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun out there.”

Johnson avoided a surfeit of action in the late stages of the race–because he was ahead of it. By the time Dave Blaney’s spin brought out the fourth caution on Lap 138, the five-time champion already had led 106 laps.

That yellow followed a caution for an accident in the Tunnel Turn on Lap 133, when Juan Pablo Montoya drove hard into the corner under Matt Kenseth, lost control of his No. 42 and started a synchronized spin with Kenseth.

Subsequently, Johnson had to endure four restarts but did so as the leader and quickly regained control of the race in each instance. All told, Johnson led 128 of 160 laps.

Biffle was happy with a runner-up finish that jumped him three positions to 10th in the standings, but he conceded that his No. 16 Ford was no match for Johnson’s Chevy SS.

“Jimmie was in a league of his own,” said Biffle, who took the green flag from the fourth position on the final restart with four laps left and surged past Earnhardt and Kyle Busch in the first corner. “I was going to have to get up beside him, take the air off him–something to try and gain an advantage.

“But I gave him such a good push on the restart I couldn’t catch back up with him… I couldn’t get him.”

Though Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Kyle Busch and Hamlin finished sixth and eighth, respectively, Hamlin said he could feel a reduction in horsepower in his TRD (Toyota Racing Development) engine, after the engines were detuned in favor of reliability in reaction to several recent valve train failures.

“Any horsepower change is going to be a difficult thing to overcome, especially this week and next week (at Michigan), our two horsepower race tracks,” Hamlin said. “I wouldn’t be opposed to say that other guys probably stepped up coming to this race track, and we took a step back.

“It’s kind of a double whammy, but it’s something TRD’s going to work through.”

After Johnson was assessed a drive-through penalty for jumping the final restart — a sanction Johnson protested vehemently — Stewart passed Juan Pablo Montoya on Lap 398 of 400 to win Sunday’s FedEx 400 benefiting Autism Speaks at Dover International Speedway.

The victory was the first of the season and third at Dover for Stewart, who has notched 42 of his 48 career wins after May 31. Stewart finished .788 seconds ahead of Montoya, who matched his career-best NASCAR Sprint Cup Series finish on an oval track.

Jeff Gordon came home third, followed by Kyle Busch and reigning Cup champion Brad Keselowski. Johnson finished 17th, the first car one lap down, smarting from a penalty he felt was unjustified.

But Keselowski’s Ford failed the height-stick test in post-race inspection (too low in the front), with penalties expected after NASCAR’s completion meeting during the coming week.

Stewart, whose struggles this year have been well-documented, was happy to take the win, no matter how it came his way. Coming on the heels of a seventh-place run last week at Charlotte, a 1.5-mile downforce track, Stewart was happy to point out the progress his team is making.

“It’s definitely momentum,” Stewart said. “We got two weeks of momentum under our belt now at two totally different race tracks. That is big. Momentum is huge in this sport. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. We won’t sit… I guarantee you none of these guys behind you (his crew) will tell you we are exactly where we want to be right now. It’s a good reward for how hard they have been working to get that first win of the year.

“Now it’s trying to be more consistent and stay in the top 10 more and make our program better. It’s proof that no matter how bad it’s been this year, none of these guys have quit and given up. Just really proud of the effort this weekend; I think we probably made more gains from Friday to right now than any team in the garage did. I’m really proud of that fact.”

If Stewart was elated after the race, Johnson was still fuming.

“I totally disagree with the call, but it is what it is, and we’ll just come back and try to win in the fall,” he said.

Johnson knew he had beaten Montoya to the start/finish line, not knowing whether something was wrong with Montoya’s car, and said he tried to give the position back to the Colombian driver.

“I ran half-throttle for the first half a lap, waiting for him, and then at some point you’ve got to go, and you’ve got to race, and that’s when I got back in the gas and took off,” he explained. “I was hoping they would see that I was trying to give him the spot back.”

NASCAR vice president Robin Pemberton, however, described the penalty as cut-and-dried.

“That was an easy call — a very easy call,” Pemberton said. “He beat the 42 even out of the (restart) box, from what we could see on the film, we give ‘em an opportunity to give it back.”

Until the decisive penalty, it looked for all the world as if Johnson would claim a record eighth victory at the Monster Mile.

Johnson started 24th and, in the early stages of the race, had difficulty moving forward through traffic. In fact, the No. 48 Chevrolet SS went a lap down when Kyle Busch passed him on Lap 70.

But Johnson came to pit road early, on Lap 71, and used the extra time on new tires to regain the lost lap by the time NASCAR called an opportune caution for debris in Turn 2 on Lap 80. From that point on, it was a charge to the front by the five-time champion.

Johnson had worked his way up to sixth before a caution for debris on the backstretch slowed the field on Lap 160, moments after a blown engine eliminated what was arguably the strongest car in the race, Matt Kenseth’s No. 20 Toyota.

After a restart on Lap 165, Johnson again moved forward, finally taking the lead for the first time on Lap 206, passing Kyle Busch to the inside through Turns 1 and 2.

Just as a Johnson victory was looking academic, however, Denny Hamlin’s right front tire blew in Turn 1 and sent his No. 11 Toyota hard into the outside wall, bringing out the seventh caution of the race. Montoya took two tires when the lead-lap cars came to pit road and narrowly beat Johnson to the exit.

That turned the race inside-out, as NASCAR black-flagged Johnson for beating Montoya to the start/finish line on the restart on Lap 382. Montoya held off Stewart for 16 laps but wore out his tires in the process and had to surrender the top spot.

“In one of the runs under green, we decided to make a couple of big changes on the car, and the car just took off — came to life,” Montoya said. “It came to life at the right time. It’s a shame there at the end that it was way too loose. I just couldn’t hold Tony off.”

Notes: Despite running 17th, Johnson holds a 30-point lead over second-place Carl Edwards (14th Sunday) in the series standings… Kyle Busch, who has two victories this season, moved back into ninth place after falling out of the top 10 last week at Charlotte… Hamlin’s crash put a serious crimp in his effort to qualify for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup despite missing four races with a back injury. Hamlin dropped two spots to 26th in the standings and is 74 points behind Ryan Newman in 20th, the position he needs to reach to be eligible for a Chase wild card.

Speeding away from Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne after a restart on Lap 81 of 90, Johnson won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series all-star exhibition race for a record fourth time, beating charging Joey Logano to the stripe by 1.722 seconds.

Kyle Busch, who won the second and third segments of 20-laps each, ran third, followed by Kahne and Kurt Busch. The elder Busch brother won the first and fourth segments and was first onto pit road before the final dash but exited fifth with a less-than-stellar pit stop.

Despite changes to his pit crew this week, Johnson’s over-the-wall gang performed an 11-second pit stop that got him out of the pits on the front row, beside Kahne, for the final restart. Ultimately, that made all the difference.

With the victory, Johnson broke a tie with teammate Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Sr. for most wins in the non-points race, won his second straight All-Star Race and collected $1 million for his efforts.

“To beat Jeff and Earnhardt, two guys I’ve looked up to my whole life—two massive icons of our sport—this means the world to me,” said Johnson, who started 18th after sliding through his pit box and drawing a penalty for a loose lug nut during Friday’s qualifying session.

“I really didn’t think we had a shot at winning tonight, starting (18th), but we had a great race car and worked our way through there and got the job done. Over time, honestly, it’s just dedication and drive from every member at Hendrick Motorsports, every member on this No. 48 team. We’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished, but we know we’ve got to keep pushing harder and pushing one another.”

Kyle Busch thought he had the fastest car, but a slower-than-usual four-tire stop put his No. 18 Toyota on the second row for the final restart.

“We just didn’t get the best pit stop there at the end to get us out on the front row, and when you’re back behind cars, you’re getting beat up on,” Busch said. “It is what it is. We’ll just take this as a good learning day and hopefully bring back some speed like this to the (Coca-Cola) 600 (May 26).”

NASCAR’s luck with weather held Saturday night, with a large enough window to complete the race with just one delay.

With Kurt Busch leading from the outset, NASCAR called a caution because of rain after Lap 8 and red-flagged the race after 13 laps when the shower intensified. The drivers came to pit road, parked in their stalls and waited.

The rain didn’t come soon enough, however, to save reigning Cup champion Brad Keselowski. On the second lap, transmission troubles sent his No. 2 Penske Racing Ford to the garage.

“Something just broke in the back half of the drive train, either the transmission or drive shaft gear – I’m not sure which one – but it’s one of those deals, unfortunately,” Keselowski said. “We’ll try to learn from it and move on.”

With Keselowski in the garage, the race resumed after a stoppage of 41 minutes 28 seconds. Kurt Busch pulled away from brother Kyle Busch to win the first 20-lap segment by .751 seconds.

Kyle Busch kept the second segment in the family, pulling away from Clint Bowyer after a restart on Lap 29—after Ricky Stenhouse Jr. bounced off the Turn 4 wall and knocked Mark Martin for a loop through the grass in the quad-oval.

Jamie McMurray led wire-to-wire to win the Sprint Showdown and transfer into the main event. McMurray, who started second, took two tires during the halfway competition caution after 20 laps and pulled away to beat Cup rookie Stenhouse to the finish line by 1.226 seconds.

Stenhouse transferred into the All-Star Race as the second-place finisher. His romantic interest, Danica Patrick, finished ninth in the Showdown but punched her ticket into the All-Star Race as the winner of the Sprint Fan vote.

“Obviously being out front is massive,” McMurray said during the break between the Showdown and the main event. “When I got by (polesitter) Martin (Truex Jr.) at the start of the race… I was trying to take it easy because I didn’t know with the track being green how quickly the tires would fall off, and even running at like 80 percent it was amazing what a difference just being in clean air was.

“I had a really good car in practice (Friday). I thought honestly the 56 (Truex) and I had the two best cars looking at times yesterday, and then the two tire stop was the right call for us. It got us up front.”

McMurray’s words proved prophetic. Being out front for the final 10-lap run was crucial to Johnson’s record run.

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.

David Gilliland pushed Ragan, his teammate, to the lead on the final circuit in a green-white checkered-flag finish that took Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 four laps past its scheduled distance of 188 laps. Gilliland came home second, followed by pole sitter Carl Edwards, Michael Waltrip and series leader Jimmie Johnson.

As Ragan put it, two Davids beat the Goliaths of NASCAR racing in one of the sport’s most unlikely finishes ever.

Ragan’s victory followed a massive wreck that took the race to overtime–and to near-darkness, in what truly was truly was a Talladega night. In fact, NASCAR gave the drivers a chance to change their tinted visors for clear ones during the final caution.

Afterwards, Ragan tried to put the win in perspective.

“I can only imagine what it felt like back in 1988 when Mark Martin got that first win for Jack Roush or when Geoff Bodine won that first race for Hendrick Motorsports,” said Ragan, who scored his only Sprint Cup win at Daytona in July 2011, his last season with Jack Roush. “I’m sure it was just as special.

“A lot of these guys have been to Victory Lane in the Sprint Cup Series and late model racing, short tracks, ARCA – all kinds of series – but to do it here at Talladega in 2013, like I said, it’s a true David vs. Goliath story. I couldn’t be more proud to play my own role.”

Ragan restarted 10th and Gilliland 11th for the final two-lap sprint. As the cars raced into Turn 1, they were barely visible from the frontstretch grandstand, but the teammates managed to find each other on the track. For the first time in NASCAR’s new Gen-6 car, Gilliland pushed another car through the corners–to the amazement of Edwards, whose jaw dropped in the post-race news conference as Gilliland described the final two laps.

“We got restarted there, and it was sprinkling, and it was dark and there was (speedy-dry) on the track so it got on the windshield where it was wet but I could see, and I could see David there and he came down,” Gilliland said. “Michael Waltrip was behind me, giving me a good run and just carried a lot of momentum up through there and got hooked up with David and figured he’s got the best chance of anybody sticking together with him out there and just worked our way up there.

“It got real tight getting into (Turn) 3 and 4 with Carl there. I know David was sideways and out of the gas, and Carl was right up on his door, and could have gone a number of ways. But, thankfully I just stayed on his bumper. I pushed him all the way through the corners. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that with this car, with these style of cars, because with these type of cars in practice I’ve pushed people down the back straight and it actually kind of gets underneath that little lip underneath the back bumper cover and I’ve always been kind of scared getting into the corner. As the front car compresses, the back part of the nose doesn’t have anywhere to go because the splitter is already on the racetrack.

“But I just pushed him all the way around there and Carl about stalled out a little bit, and we were just able to carry some good momentum and come home one-two.”

On Lap 183, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. tried a four-wide move to the outside, but contact with J.J. Yeley’s car triggered a multicar melee that wiped out Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman, Danica Patrick and Clint Bowyer, among others.

That set up the two-lap dash in overtime with Matt Kenseth in the lead and Edwards beside him on the front row. Kenseth, who led 142 laps dropped to eighth at the finish.

Michael McDowell blew a tire and hit the wall on Lap 174 to cause the fourth caution of the race and bunch a field that had become segmented during a series of green-flag pit stops that ended on Lap 168. When NASCAR threw the yellow, Johnson led a six-car breakaway that included Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Edwards, Bowyer and Waltrip.

The caution, however, brought 19 other lead-lap cars back into play and the massive wreck at the end of the backstretch changed the game completely.

NASCAR slowed the race on Lap 122 and stopped it after Lap 125 when showers that had been forecast for race day arrived shortly after 3 p.m. ET. Edwards had nosed ahead of Stenhouse moments earlier and was ahead at the last scoring loop the cars crossed before the yellow.

That left the Fords of Edwards, Stenhouse, Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski at the front of the field when NASCAR red-flagged the race, forcing drivers and fans to wait and see whether the event would resume.

After a stoppage of 3 hours, 36 minutes, the race restarted after pit stops, and Kenseth quickly surged to the front.

As the cars approached Turn 1 on lap 43, a tap from Kyle Busch’s No. 18 Toyota turned Kasey Kahne’s No. 5 Chevrolet into the outside wall and triggered a wreck that damaged 16 cars, among them the Chevys of Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick, the Toyota of Brian Vickers (after a driver change with Denny Hamlin) and the Ford of Greg Biffle.

“I know I got in the back of the 5 (Kahne), and I guess I was trying to go to the outside of him,” Busch said. ‘But he just moved up in front of me, and I wasn’t expecting it, and I tried to go to the outside of him, and before I could get to the outside of him I got in the back of him.

“I just hate that I caused a hell of a melee for everybody. I hate that. A lot of cars got torn up, and it’s way too early in the race to be doing any of those sorts of moves, whether he made it or I made it. Just I hate it that we all got crashed in that deal.”

Both Kahne and Busch visited the infield care center after the wreck, and both were released in short order.

“I just kind of got shot through the center (of the field) there, just a lot of momentum coming from behind,” Kahne said of the action immediately before the crash. “Felt the No. 18 pushing me, and next thing I know, I was spinning.

“You just can’t push with these cars. We learned that at Daytona. He was pushing me and spun me in the wall, and then (it) happened again, so that is what it is.”

Kahne said he and Busch didn’t speak in the care center.

“No, I didn’t talk to him,” Kahne said. “I think we both probably understand what happened, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

Notes: Johnson’s margin in the Cup standings over second-place Edwards shrank by two points to 41. Dale Earnhardt Jr. (17th Sunday) is third, 59 points behind his Hendrick Motorsports teammate… Paul Menard finished 26th with a sour engine but gained two spots to eighth in the standings because other drivers in Chase-eligible positions had bigger issues… Ragan and Gilliland won a combined $608,261 for their 1-2 finish, a welcome payday for a team run by owner Bob Jenkins predominantly out of his own pocket.

If you looked at statistics alone, you’d say that Kenseth dominated Sunday at Kansas Speedway in the eighth NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race of the season. After all, Kenseth won the event from the pole and led 163 of the 267 laps.

In reality, Kenseth prevailed in a race of extraordinary strategic complexity, with divergent approaches shuffling and reshuffling the running order until an opportune caution on Lap 218 put Kenseth back in the lead at just the right time.

Nonetheless, it took all of Kenseth’s consummate skill to hold off fast-closing Kasey Kahne, who narrowed what had been a lead of more than one second to .151 seconds at the finish. Jimmie Johnson ran third, followed by Martin Truex Jr. and Clint Bowyer.

The victory was Kenseth’s second at Kansas, his second of the season and the 26th of his career. The driver of the No. 20 Toyota has won both races at Kansas since the track was repaved last year.

“It was kind of like musical chairs,” Kenseth said. “You had to be out front when the music stopped. Our car was very fast in clean air. It was reasonable in dirty air, but it wasn’t quite good enough to catch all them guys and pass ‘em (in traffic).

“Thankfully, I had a couple of really crazy-good restarts for some reason and made up some ground and got us back in position.”

Kahne started 27th, but the speed in his No. 5 Chevrolet SS belied the qualifying effort. Kahne’s crew tightened up the handling of his car for the final run, but not quite enough. There was a sense of déjà vu for Kahne, who chased Kenseth to the finish line March 10 at Las Vegas.

“We were very close at the end, battling with Matt,” Kahne said. “Felt like Vegas all over again, just kind of felt like really similar to that in how I could catch him but couldn’t really do anything once I got close. It made my car a little bit looser. So I tried a few things there, and he kind of blocked those spots and went those directions and gained the speed that I (had), and then we were even again.

“It was tough, but we still had a great race.”

Defending Cup champion Brad Keselowski came home sixth, despite sustaining heavy damage to his rear bumper when the field checked up on the first lap.

That damage had far-reaching effects — so much so that it changed the complexion of the race on Lap 218. The rear bumper cover from Keselowski’s No. 2 Ford dislodged, causing the eighth caution — right after Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Dale Earnhardt Jr., Carl Edwards and Greg Biffle had made green-flag pit stops.

But since all lead-lap cars came to pit road under the yellow, those four drivers were able to regain the lead lap through wave-arounds. Kenseth led the field to the restart on Lap 225, with Truex beside him and Hendrick teammates Johnson and Kahne on the second row.

Kenseth pulled away after the restart, and Kahne charged into the second spot. On Lap 236, Johnson passed Truex for the third position. That’s the order in which they ran to the finish.

With his third-place finish, Johnson opened a 37-point lead in the Cup standings over second-place Kahne, who gained five spots. Johnson is 38 points ahead of Keselowski in third.

Keselowski position in the standings reflects a 25-point penalty levied after the Apr. 13 race at Texas, where NASCAR confiscated the rear axle housings of both Penske Racing cars and subsequently levied penalties on the organization. Penske has appealed, but Keselowski won’t regain the 25 points unless the appeal is upheld.

Note: For the third straight race, a driver won from the pole. The last time that happened was 1985 (Bill Elliott at Michigan, Dale Earnhardt at Bristol and Elliott at Darlington).

Leading 346 of 500 laps in Sunday’s STP Gas Booster 500 at Martinsville Speedway, Johnson racked up his eighth NASCAR Sprint Cup Series win at the .526-mile short track and the 62nd win of his career. For the second straight event at Martinsville, Johnson won from the pole.

Clint Bowyer ran second, followed by Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne and Kyle Busch.

The first repeat winner through six 2013 Cup races, Johnson regained the series lead by six points over sixth-place finisher and defending champion Brad Keselowski.

If a victory at a short track can ever be called a walk in the park, Johnson enjoyed a Sunday stroll from start to finish. At no point in the race did he run below fifth.

“I think the fact that we had just such a calm weekend was the biggest part,” Johnson said. “It’s easy to start chasing things here and get yourself off track. We always race well, and fortunately here you pit a lot and you can make big changes to your race car to get you in the ballgame.

“We’ve won races where we were just terrible to start the race, having no fun. (Crew chief) Chad (Knaus) is throwing spring rubbers in the car and the track bar is coming up or down, wedge in and out, all those huge, huge changes, and we get ourselves in contention.

“I don’t know where we were – someone said the worst I was on the track today was fourth [actually, fifth]. We just executed from the first laps in practice to where we were at the end of the race, and that was fun. We weren’t chasing a setup or track conditions or a variety of things that we’ve done in the past.”

Danica Patrick ran 12th in her first visit to Martinsville, her career-best Cup finish at an open-motor race track. Patrick was the top finisher from Stewart-Haas Racing.

NASCAR red-flagged the race on Lap 487, after the brakes failed on Kurt Busch’s No. 78 Chevrolet SS and sent the car hard into the Turn 1 wall. The car rolled along the fence, spewing flames from beneath the hood.

Busch had the presence of mind to trigger his fire extinguisher before the exited the car and climbed from the driver’s-side window apparently none the worse for the flames.

After the stoppage, Johnson led the field to a restart on Lap 493 with Bowyer beside him in the outside lane. But Johnson pulled away over the final eight laps to beat Bowyer to the finish line by .628 seconds.

To say that Hendrick Motorsports in general and Johnson in particular have a handle on Martinsville is a massive understatement. Johnson gave owner Rick Hendrick his 20th Martinsville victory, breaking a tie with Petty Enterprises for most ever at the paper-clip shaped speedway.

“There’s just certain tracks where the drivers that Hendrick has had over the past, as well as now—and just our race cars—it just really suits that,” said Gordon, who had a strong car on long runs but couldn’t keep up with his teammate over the short haul. “Qualifying up front really can be huge here.

You get a driver like Jimmie and a team like the 48—or ours as well, or the 15 (Bowyer)—you put them on the pole in that No. 1 pit stall (closest to the exit from pit road), and it’s going to be really, really hard to beat them.”

Bowyer’s winning chances suffered a blow during an 11-car incident on Lap 180. As caution flew for a crash on the backstretch, Bowyer ran into Jamie McMurray’s Chevrolet, which had checked up suddenly off Turn 4, and was clobbered from behind by his Michael Waltrip Racing teammate, Martin Truex Jr.

Bowyer had been strong in practice but qualified 15th and felt the mediocre performance in time trials had hurt him.

“I qualified bad, got ourselves back there, got it wrecked—got it tore up on both ends,” Bowyer said. “You get up there, and you’re door-to-door with the 48 that’s been enjoying clean sailing all day long, you look at him, and it’s ready to go back to the next short track.

“Mine is all tore to hell and ready to go put a new body on it. You know what you’re up against. You want to say, ‘Bad luck,’ and everything  else, but you make a lot of your own luck. We did a lot of things well this week but missed it in qualifying and ultimately paid the price.”

Patrick, who started the race at the rear of the field because of an engine change, restarted 20th from the outside lane on Lap 369 and promptly dropped five spots as cars in the inside lane freight-trained her.

But Patrick patiently and methodically drove back to the 17th position and was running there when Brian Vickers cut a tire and spun on Lap 448 to cause the 10th caution of the afternoon.

The yellow gave drivers a much-needed opportunity to pit for new tires. Out first after the stops, Johnson led the field to green on Lap 459 with Gordon beside him. Yellow flew again shortly when chain-reaction contact between Vickers, Patrick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. sent Earnhardt spinning in Turn 4.

Johnson passed Earnhardt as the driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet tried to re-fire and right his car, putting Earnhardt a lap down. Earnhardt finished 24th and fell from first to third in points, 12 behind Johnson, his Hendrick Motorsports teammate.

Notes: The 346 laps led are the most for Johnson in a single race in his career. Johnson also became the seventh driver in Cup history to lead 2,000 or more career laps at Martinsville. His total now stands at 2,327. … Despite fighting the handling of his No. 11 Toyota for much of the afternoon — and despite a snafu on pit road when he left before his left-front tire was mounted – Mark Martin salvaged a 10th-place finish subbing for injured Denny Hamlin.

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.

Tom Lamb, Lowe’s chief marketing officer, said:

It has been a great ride with Jimmie since he started in the Cup Series 12 years ago. We are proud to sponsor one of the most elite teams and drivers in racing and have a five-time champion carry the Lowe’s brand each week.

Johnson said:

Lowe’s believed in me before I had any success. They are all I’ve ever known in my Sprint Cup career, and their support of me and the No. 48 team is second to none in the sport. We’ve been together for this crazy ride, and I’m so happy we’re continuing it together. They truly are family, and I’m proud to represent them.

Rick Hendrick added:

We caught lightning in a bottle with this combination. Jimmie and Chad have been successful because they always have a plan and do a great job executing. Lowe’s is the same way as a sponsor. The partnership has been incredible, and we’re looking forward to working together for many more years.