Jimmie Johnson scored his 50th Sprint Cup victory of his driving career making his way to the front late to win the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Johnson led the final six laps after taking the lead from Tony Stewart.

The final 10 laps of the race were run under green. During the last caution period, Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards and Stewart pitted for two tires; Kurt Busch and Johnson took four.

The four-tire cars were clearly stronger. Johnson sprinted from sixth to first in only three laps and beat Stewart to the finish by .895 of a second.

“We have worked so hard for this,” Johnson, a winner at Bristol Motor Speedway for the first time, said in victory lane. “I thought we were in trouble. But the four tires were everything.”

Kurt Busch finishing third after leading 278 laps was clearly dissapointed were he finished. On the final restart, he was bottled up behind two tire traffic and didn’t get a shot to challenge for first.

“We were solid all day,” Busch said. “We just got beat by the luck of the draw on the restarts. It’s luck on which lane is going to go. I thought we had them beat. I’d rather lose to any of the other 41 teams but that 48 team.

“I feel exhausted. I feel disappointed.”

With the win, his third in five races this season, Johnson tied Junior Johnson and Ned Jarrett at 50 career wins. They are at 10th on the all time list.

Busch had a one second lead over Johnson with 18 laps to go when debris in the fourth turn caused the race’s last caution, putting teams in the difficult position of deciding between two tires and four.

Clouds framed the racetrack virtually all day, and brief rain showers forced a pair of caution flags.

A green flag on lap 412 ended the second rain caution and produced a brief battle for the lead between Penske Racing teammates Brad Keselowski and Busch.

The race stage was scrambled on lap 343 when contact between former teammates Greg Biffle and Mark Martin sparked a 13 car wreck in turn three.

Racing in the top five, Martin tapped Biffle, causing both cars to slow. That created an accordion effect behind them not unusual thing at Bristol, and several other lead group cars piled into the melee. Among those impacted were Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, Juan Pablo Montoya and Edwards.

The contact ruined a strong performance by Martin, who later returned to the track 91 laps down.

Montoya’s car had been particularly strong all afternoon, and he appeared to be on his way to challenging for his first NASCAR oval-track victory. Instead, he limped around in mid-pack with right-front damage and finished 26th.

Among those Dale Earnhardt Jr. was caught speeding, dropping him from the top five to the rear of the field after the seventh caution. It turned out to be a positive penalty for Earnhardt Jr., who possibly would have been a part of the 13 car wreck on lap 343 if he had been close to the front. He finished seventh.

The race, the fifth of the Sprint Cup season, developed in front of a crowd estimated at 120,000, the first time in 56 races BMS has failed to produce a sellout.

Race Day Notables:

Roush Fenway Racing:

Greg Biffle finished fourth; Matt Kenseth was fifth and Carl Edwards sixth for the organization in one of its best overall efforts of the season. Biffle led five times for 78 laps to boot.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.:

After working his way all the way up to fifth, Earnhardt Jr. was flagged for speeding on pit road on lap 326. As a result, he restarted the race 26th, but settled down and drove his way back to a solid seventh-place finish. The result gained him five spots in the point standings, where he’s now eighth.

Jamie McMurray:

After winning the Daytona 500, the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing driver finished 17th, 34th and 29th in the next three races. His eighth-place run at Bristol seemed to signal that the team has gotten its game back.

Kyle Busch:

Horrible in practice, just as bad in qualifying, and contact with the wall during the race seemed to just about sum up the weekend for Busch, who won both Cup races here last year. But somehow, the team rallied and Busch worked his way back into the top 10 late in the race to score a hard-earned ninth-place finish.

Speed Tv contributed to this report.

RESULTS: Food City 500 – BRISTOL

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