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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Gordon led more than 210 laps of the 267-lap event before losing the lead to Johnson, who seems hellbent to win his fifth NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship before Gordon does.

Johnson won last week at Auto Club Speedway and told members of the media leading up to Sunday’s race he could care less about the people who think he’s tainting NASCAR racing with his dominance. “You compete to win. I’m not gonna apologize for winning,” he said.

  

While Johnson drove away for Sunday’s victory, Kevin Harvick also passed Gordon for the runnerup spot. Gordon finished third ahead of fourth-place Mark Martin. And Matt Kenseth edged Joey Logano for fifth. Logano was sixth, a very impressive finish for the young driver. Tony Stewart was seventh, Clint Bowyer eighth, Kasey Kahne ninth and Greg Biffle 10th.

Dale Earnhardt, Jr., continued his struggle to compete with the frontrunners by finishing 16th.

Speed TV contributed to this report

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After a bad finish at Daytona Jimmie Johnson bounces back to wins his 48th race in the #48 Lowes Chevrolet at the Auto Club 500 in Fontana California.

Johnson led the last 24 laps of the race to beat out a hard charging Kevin Harvick. Harvick chased Johnson down in the last 20 laps, cutting down a two second Johnson lead. With only five laps to go Harvick slid coming out of turn 4 slapping the wall spoiling any chance to get by Jimmie Johnson.

“Life is good, man,” said Johnson, who is pursuing his fifth straight Sprint Cup championship. “We’re right back in victory lane.”

Luck was on Johnson’s side as with 27 laps to go Johnson pitted for his final stop of the race, and the caution came out for Brad Keselowski when he lost control and spun down the frontstrech, Johnson got  off of pit road just in time, so he would start up front on the restart.

“The fact that we were on pit road when the caution came out gave us track position, and we finally got the car turning,” Johnson said.

Harvick was pushing hard and said he lost control of his car trying to catch up to Johnson.

“The 48 saw me coming and moved up,” Harvick said. “I lost the nose of the car and got in the wall and knocked the right front fender in.”

Harvick who got a pit road speeding violation, putting him to the back of the field drove his car top the front to challenged Johnson at the end of the race.

Completing the top five were Jeff Burton, Mark Martin and Joey Logano.

  

“I think we have a little bit of work to do, although we won the race,” Johnson said. “We’ll just keep working hard. This is a good step in the right direction.”

The race saw a lot of different challengers at the front of the field, that were contributed by NASCAR’s new aero package and a new tire compound that Goodyear brought to the race. It was unbelievable at how many pit road violation there were considering NACAR warned the driver after the Nationwide race. Teams seemed to have more engine failures than normal, mostly thought do to the long green runs and the cooler weather making the engines rev higher and longer.

Kasey Kahne brought out the second caution when he lost control coming out of turn four spinning into the wet infield bending up the left side of the front splitter and right front fender damage.

Johnson, Harvick and Montoya were up front of the field for most of the first half of the race, round half way Montoya’s engine gave way ending the #42 Target’s car day.

A few laps later after spinning his tires on the restart, Ryan Newman blew his engine up big time on the fronstrech ending his day and giving Newman his second DNF of the season.

At lap 70 with bad weather threatening most  of the leaders were forced to make a green flag pit stop.

A light sprinkle bought out a caution with Denny Hamlin leading the race. A few laps into the caution Denny Hamlin was forced to pit giving up the lead to Scott Speed. Speed led a few laps under caution to get his 5 bonus points, hoping the rain would come, but he was forced to pit running low on fuel.

After the rain delay there were only 50 laps to go and Jeff Burton and Kyle Busch lead to field to the green. The crew chief were looking to the sky as more bad weather was threatening.

Carl Edwards and Denny Hamlin got together after the restart causing Hamlin’s left rear tire to go flat.

Jeff Burton was showing the strength of the Earnhardt Childress engines with 42 laps to go looking like Burton had the car to beat.  Unfortunately for Burton the handling went away in the closing laps losing the battle with Harvick for second place. The RCR cars were strong all day putting all three cars in the top ten.

Videos From California

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Kevin Harvick won the big race in 2007, finished 10th in the standings and hasn’t won a Cup race since.

On the other hand, a bad day in the 500 isn’t a disaster, either.

That’s the reason that four-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson isn’t all that worried his fourth
consecutive bad start at Daytona. This time, it was a flat tire late in the race that relegated Double J to a 35th-place finish.

No worries. He’s got 25 more races to make up for that bad day and put himself among the 12 drivers who qualify for the 10-race Chase. And Johnson goes into this season as the only driver to have made it into the Chase every year since it began in 2004.

  

Denny Hamlin, who hopes to be the driver to unseat Johnson as champion, got off to a so-so start at Daytona, finishing 17th. But he’s looking forward to starting to find the groove in California.

“Why is this race at California important? “ Hamlin said. “All of our hard work over the off-season is going to show up right here in California. This is the first real race track that we go to where the setups are going to matter, the driving and all that is a lot different.

“This is our first real race of 2010 that’s not a superspeedway. It’s a big one for us because it kind of gives everyone a gauge of if we were heading in the right direction during the off season or not.’’

McMurray, who won Daytona in his first race for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, is anxious to see how the team stacks up on the intermediate tracks that make up the bulk of the Cup schedule. Teammate Juan Pablo Montoya was solid on the 1 ½ and 2 mile ovals a year ago, racing well enough to make the Chase.

“Certainly going and running well at Fontana is the goal from here on out,’’ McMurray said. “As far as putting any thought into what the previous three (Daytona winners) have done, I’m not really paying any attention to that kind of stuff.’’

Now teams need to considerate on the rest of the season and let the past be the past.

Dale Earnhardt JR. had a great finish in the 500 and hopes to keep the momentum going into to this week at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. Hopefully he can show to his fans and doubter that he can drive a race car.

“That’s great, but we have to see what happens at California, Las Vegas and Atlanta,’’ Junior noted. “If we run good at a couple of those races, then we’All know all that work that was done, all the changes that were made over the winter, are paying off.’’

But the Daytona 500 is a season of it’s own. And it’s over.

Speed TV contributed to this report.

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No driver, especially those with championship hopes, wants to start the year with a bad race at Daytona. Last year, for example, Mark Martin suffered through two engine failures and a catastrophic tire explosion in the first four races and spent the next 22 races furiously digging out from 34th in points to get back in the top 12 in points.

Several of the top drivers in the Cup series had a disappointing Daytona 500, so they’ll be looking to rebound in a big way Sunday at Auto Club Speedway in Southern California, with the running of the Auto Club 500.

  

Six of the 12 drivers who qualified for the Chase for the Sprint Cup in 2009 finished outside the top 20 in the Daytona 500: Tony Stewart (22nd), Kurt Busch (23rd), Jeff Gordon (26th), Kasey Kahne (30th), Ryan Newman (34th) and Jimmie Johnson (35th). Certainly, it isn’t panic time for any of them by a long shot.

“It sucks,” Johnson said of his Daytona 500, which ended with a broken rear axle. “But it’s a long season and we came out of here last year with a crashed race car and still came back. We have a little work ahead of us.”

“Daytona was very disappointing – more so than I think a lot of people realize,” said Newman, Stewart’s teammate at Stewart-Haas Racing. “We were just biding our time in the back of the field and, with 10 laps or so to go, we decided it was time to make our move. I don’t really know what happened, but I was the recipient of it. We were seven laps from the end of the race, well before the green-white-checker, and we ended up with a destroyed race car. It was just very disappointing. We wanted to come out of the box strong at Daytona, but we walked away with a 34th-place finish. We had good cars but we didn’t get the finish we wanted.”

Gordon, who finished second at both ACS races last year, is ready for better days, too.

“I’m hoping we can run better and get better as the season goes on,” said Gordon, “I certainly feel that we have that capability. Last year, I think we were the best team during the first 10 races, but we flattened out. We’re looking at the championship differently this year. We want to start the season off right, but we want to build and get better as the season goes along. “And show our strengths at the right time — not only for winning races, but battling for the championship.”

Speed TV contributed to this report.

Video Courtesy of Speed TV

Man I thought the Gatorade Duels were pretty exciting,  you couldn’t get two much closer finishes that that.

The Roush Racing cars looked pretty strong all day looks like they might be a force to reckon with when Sunday come around.

Not really sure with Dale Earnhardt Jr he didn’t look real impressive but sounded like the car was going to be good in Sunday race according to the interviews he gave. I hope he can do better Sunday than what he has shown the rest of this week.

This from Speed tv.

The Gatorade Duel At Daytona delivered back-to-back thrilling finishes as Jimmie Johnson edged Kevin Harvick at the stripe by .005 seconds – the second-closest finish in the history of the Gatorade Duel since the inception of electronic timing and scoring.

Kasey Kahne, behind the wheel of the No. 9 Budweiser Ford, nipped Tony Stewart at the line in the second Gatorade Duel by .014 seconds to capture his first win on the legendary 31-degree high banks of Daytona.

“It feels great,” Kahne said of his inaugural win on the 2.5-mile tri-oval. “You watch tons of races growing up as a kid. I can remember every Daytona 500, having 15-20 people at my house. Daytona is one of those tracks that has a ton of history. My car owner, Richard Petty, is a big part of that history and it feels good to be in Victory Lane here.”

“As I went by the start/finish line sideways, I looked up and hoped that it was the checkered (flag) because I felt like I was going to spin out,” said Johnson, who posted his first win in the 60-lap event and his third career triumph at the “World Center of Racing”. “Everybody wants this big prize. Everybody wants to win the Daytona 500. I think we sent a message today.”

Johnson, the four-time defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion, had to start at the back of the pack after his No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet was involved in an incident during practice on Wednesday.

The car, which the 2006 Daytona 500 champion raced to a second-place finish here last July in the Coke Zero 400 Powered By Coca-Cola, made its way through the pack and into the top 10 before leading the last seven laps of the race.

Kahne, who gave Ford their first win in the Gatorade Duel since Elliott Sadler back in 2006, had a shorter trip to the top 10 –

starting in the middle of the pack and leading twice for three laps.

Mark Martin, pole winner for the 52nd annual Daytona 500, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., who will be starting alongside Martin on the front row Sunday, led off their respective Gatorade Duel 150-mile qualifying races to determine the starting order for “The Great American Race”.

Martin led once for a race-high 28 laps, and Earnhardt Jr. led once for five laps.

Three-time Daytona 500 champion Jeff Gordon will have to go to a back-up car and start at the rear of the field on Sunday after being involved in the final caution of the first Gatorade Duel with only six laps to go.

“We sent our Budweiser Shootout car that we wrecked on the last lap (Saturday night) home,” said Steve Letarte, crew chief of the No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet. “They’ve already repaired that, so that car is as good as new. We’re better off bringing that car out. (It’s) been back to the shop, repaired and ready to come back down.”

Of the 19 drivers who were not guaranteed a spot in Sunday’s season opener, Michael McDowell and Max Papis raced their way into the field during the first Gatorade Duel and earned their first career starts in the Daytona 500.

Mike Bliss and Scott Speed earned the transfer spots into the Daytona 500 in the second Gatorade Duel while two-time Daytona 500 champion Bill Elliott, Joe Nemechek, Bobby Labonte and Michael Waltrip earned a starting spot with their qualifying times.

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