Dale Earnhardt Jr. fared worse than Edwards, finishing 36th after his tire exploded a lap before he planned to head to pit road to have them changed. He’s 10th in the standings.

Matt Kenseth was caught in a mid-race accident and finished 41st to drop to 11th in the standings.

Gordon seemed poised to end his yearlong losing streak, leading several times for 47 laps despite two hard bounces off the wall very early in the race. He had to pit just 10 laps into the race to change tires after hitting the wall, but still managed to make his way back to the front.

He gave up the lead for an off-sequence pit stop and never made it back to the front. He took four tires on the final pit stop, which mired him too far back into the field to make a run at the leaders over the final sprint to the finish.

“I’m so bummed I got in the wall early,” said Gordon, who has not won since a victory at the track last October. “We had to come back from that and lead this race. I knew we were out of sequence — it’s amazing how great the car is out front and how terrible when you get six cars back.

“We just got the best thing we could out of it there at the end and I’m very happy.”

Johnson was not.

He thought he had a shot at winning the race, but his late fade had him aggravated after the finish.

“We were junk at the end,” he said. “I tried to get up there. Took a lot of risk tonight, tried to get as many points as I could. Tried to hang with (Burton) and get by him, damn near threw it away a couple of times. The last third of the race we got out in left field and couldn’t get it back.”

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