The perpetual points leader has never been able to put together a full season, and his swoon typically begins in Indy. He went into the race as the leader the past two seasons, but finished 36th in 2004 and 38th last year to cough it away to Tony Stewart — who parlayed the victory into his second championship while Johnson faded all the way back to fifth.

Now Johnson will try to do the same.

“This has been the critical time leading into the championship, but this track has been an emotional disaster or some sort of disaster for us,” he said. “I’m just speechless.”

Kenseth, who has been sitting in second behind Johnson the past nine weeks and is 107 points out of the lead, said he had no chance to run down Johnson for the win.

“The 48 came out of nowhere and blew us all and won the race,” said Kenseth. “He just got through traffic better than us. He just did a better job of being in the right place getting through those cars.”

Kevin Harvick was third and Clint Bowyer, his rookie teammate at Richard Childress Racing, was fourth.

Mark Martin was fifth and Dale Earnhardt Jr. stole a sixth-place finish by not pitting on the final caution to salvage a horrible day and reclaim the 10th spot in the Chase for the championship standings.

“I’d love to have a better car so we don’t have to make those kinds of calls,” he said. “We need to do better and get better cars. We can’t make the Chase with 30th-place race cars.”

Kyle Busch was seventh, followed by Stewart, Carl Edwards and Kurt Busch.

Jeff Burton, who started from the pole and led a race-high 87 laps, finished a disappointing 12th after fading late.

Jeff Gordon, looking to race his way into the record books, never got the chance. He broke the sway bar on his Chevrolet just eight laps into the race and had to stop to have the part replaced. The repair work dropped him three laps off the pace, and even though he worked his way back onto the lead lap he wound up 16th.

The poor day prevented him from tying two distinguished marks — joining Formula One superstar Michael Schumacher as the only five-time winners in Indy history, and the late Dale Earnhardt’s mark of 76 Cup wins.

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Although Gordon was pleased with the comeback, he was dismayed by Earnhardt Jr.’s final result because of the impact it could have on the Chase field. Gordon is eighth, Stewart is ninth and Earnhardt is 10th with five races to go to make the playoffs.

“Junior lucked out there big time at the end,” Gordon said. “He was horrible all day, and that is going to hurt us as well as the fact that we weren’t up there where we needed to be because of the problems we had.”

The last-lap accident with Kahne and Biffle hurt both of their title hopes. Kahne dropped four spots in the standings to 11th and Biffle is now 12th with opportunities to race into the postseason quickly evaporating.

“We’re dwindling out of the Chase hunt, but that’s the way it goes,” said Biffle, last season’s runner-up.

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