Jeff Gordon held off Clint Bowyer in a green-white-checkered-flag finish to win the Bank of America 500 Saturday night at Lowe’s Motor Speedway—Gordon’s second straight victory, his sixth of the season and the 81st of his Nextel Cup career.
Fearful of running out of fuel, Gordon still crossed the finish line. 579 seconds ahead of Bowyer in a race that went three laps beyond its posted distance of 334 laps. Gordon extended his lead in the Chase for the NASCAR Nextel Cup to 68 points over teammate Jimmie Johnson, who rallied from a succession of problems to finish 14th.
Kyle Busch ran third, followed by Jeff Burton and Carl Edwards, as Chase drivers claimed the top five positions.
After NASCAR red-flagged the race for 12 minutes to clean up oil on the track, Ryan Newman passed Gordon to the outside after a restart on Lap 330. Two laps later, however, Newman crashed in Turn 2 and brought out the 15th and final caution to set up the two-lap dash to the finish.
A hard crash in Turn 1 involving Juan Pablo Montoya and Scott Riggs brought out the 13th caution of the race on Lap 279. Both Bowyer and Gordon pitted for four tires and fuel, but Kyle Busch beat Gordon out of the pits to take a short-lived lead. On Lap 285, after the subsequent restart, Gordon sailed past his lame-duck Hendrick Motorsports teammate and pulled away from the rest of the field.
After Busch and Bowyer swapped the lead during a 38-lap green-flag run, NASCAR called the 14th caution of the race after Johnny Sauter spun in oil that was dropped on the track by the No. 66 Chevy of his teammate, Jeff Green.
Both Kurt Busch and Stewart had to deal with problems on pit road. On Lap 177, the No. 15 car of Paul Menard rubbed Stewart’s Chevrolet as it exited his pit stall. Stewart then made hard contact with the No. 9 Dodge of Kasey Kahne, who turned in front of the two-time champion, trying to reach his own pit box.
Busch sustained damage on the right-front fender of his No. 2 Dodge after contact in the pits with the No. 01 Chevy of Mark Martin on Lap 191, but that wasn’t his undoing. Busch regained a position in the top 10 until he dropped a cylinder later in the race and then was trapped a lap down after a caution flag interrupted a cycle of green-flag pit stops.
Stewart salvaged a seventh-place result, but Busch came home 26th, two laps down.
Notes: Kevin Harvick pitted twice under green with tire trouble early in the race, finished 33rd and dropped out of sight in the Chase standings. .. Denny Hamlin had to pit under the final caution with a transmission problem and couldn’t get up to speed on the restart. He finished 20th and fell farther behind Gordon.
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