Charles W. Luzier / Reuters

Dan Wheldon, left, Casey Mears, center, and Scott Dixon won the 44th Rolex 24 on Sunday in one of the closest finishes in race history.

Dixon’s 45 mph trip through the pits with 18 minutes to go did allow Allmendinger to cut one lap off the lead, but it was still not close at the end.

For Mears, the first driver to be part of a winning Rolex team while still racing full-time in NASCAR, it was the biggest win of his career.

“It’s always been well known in racing that this is one of the biggest races around,” he said. “It’s a big honor to come here and represent NASCAR and win it.”

It appeared for a while Saturday night that the battle would come down to the two Ganassi entries. They were 1-2, with the Lexus Riley driven by road racing specialists Scott Pruett, Max Papis and Luis Diaz close behind the leaders at the halfway point.

That team also came back from an early mechanical problem that put it four laps behind, but wound up sidelined early Sunday morning when a broken oil line blew the engine.

It was an amazingly close competition for a 24-hour event, with four cars separated by just four laps at the end.

The Porsche Fabcar of Darren Law, David Donohue — son of the late Indy 500 winner Mark Donohue — and Sascha Maassen was on its way to third place when a flat tire forced Law to drive nearly a full lap at slow speed. He was able to get the car to the pits for a tire change, but lost third place to the pole-winning Porsche Crawford of Lucas Luhr, Mike Rockenfeller and Patrick Long.

Third place was a great finish for a team that had to overcome a broken axle and a nine-lap deficit early in the race. The team members charged back to the lead in the early morning darkness and built a three-lap margin over the eventual winners before a second broken axle put them out of the race in the 19th hour.

Most of the biggest names in the star-studded field were far behind or out of the race at the finish.

The Pontiac Crawford shared by retired NASCAR star Rusty Wallace, IRL sensation Danica Patrick and former Formula One drivers Allan McNish and Jan Lammers got as high as third in the 10th hour before an overheating problem and a blown head gasket retired their Pontiac Crawford.

Reigning Nextel Cup champion Tony Stewart, whose team was denied victory the last two years by mechanical problems late in the race, fell out of contention early this time.

Paired with three-time Rolex race winners Andy Wallace and Butch Leitzinger, Stewart’s team had a series of mechanical problems and wound up far off the pace in 30th, 141 laps behind the winners. The two-time NASCAR champion took his scheduled driving stints throughout the race even though his ribs, injured in a sprint car crash two weeks ago, were throbbing.

“I wish they were teeth so I could have them pulled,” Stewart said, wincing as he watched the race from the pits. “The only time they don’t hurt is when I’m in the race car.

“It’s just too bad we had all those problems because this was a very fast car and Andy and Butch are great drivers. I think we would have had a shot at it.”

The Pontiac Riley of defending champions Max Angelelli, Wayne Taylor and Emmanuel Collard was involved in a crash Saturday night and was unable to finish.

The winner among the 400-horsepower GT entries was the Porsche GT3 Cup car driven by Randy Pobst, Michael Levitas, Ian Baas and Spencer Pumpelly, finishing ninth overall.