Jeff Gordon finally shook off his bad luck at Lowe’s Motor Speedway and moved one step closer to his fifth series title with his second straight victory in a wild finish in Saturday night’s Bank of America 500.

Despite a sputtering race car, Gordon held on for the green-white-checkered finish over fellow Chase for the Nextel Cup contender Clint Bowyer after polesitter Ryan Newman spun with seven laps to go to notch his 81st career Nextel Cup victory and sixth of the season.

Chase contenders swept the top five positions with Kyle Busch coming home third, followed by Jeff Burton and Carl Edwards.

Gordon’s victory was his first since October of 1999 and his first top-10 finish in his last six starts here, breaking a string of five straight DNF’s.

“I can’t tell you how many times we tried to give this one away,” said Gordon. “Between running out of fuel there at the end and it was just crazy. This is just an incredible day for the DuPont Chevrolet. This is what we’ve been looking for is getting a win at Charlotte. We needed to get this finish.”

“Jimmie Johnson, I’m not sure what happened to him. He had us all covered, and when I saw they had a problem, I thought it was an opportunity for us.”

Gordon’s opportunity came at the expense of several other Chase for the Nextel Cup contenders, further muddling the championship picture for those chasing Gordon, who now holds a 68-point lead in the standings over Johnson.

Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and Johnson all experienced problems, however none of the Chase drivers fell harder than Harvick, who fell several laps down early in the race and dropped from fifth to eighth in the standings.

The run of bad luck for the Chase drivers even claimed Johnson - a perennial favorite at Lowe’s with 11 straight top-10 finishes here - who backed into the wall coming out of turn two on lap 232, but managed to salvage a top-20 finish.

Gordon led four times for 72 laps, passing Kyle Busch on a restart with 50 laps to go to lead for the third time. Gordon held the point for the next 38 laps before the caution flag was displayed on lap 323, followed by the red flag as the safety crews cleaned up the track.

On the restart with ten laps to go, Gordon’s car stuttered in turn one, stacking up the field behind him as Newman rocketed past into the lead.

Gordon recovered to hold onto second place, putting him in position to regain the lead as Newman unbelievably spun out just two laps later, setting up the green-white-checkered finish.

“Just unfortunate,” said Newman. “We blew a left rear tire out. I couldn’t tell if it felt a little spongy before, but obviously the car was plenty fast. We were running away from them after Gordon’s little slipup, we ended up blowing a tire.”

Gordon again faltered on the restart as he and Bowyer made contact heading into turn one, but Gordon’s car came to life and pulled away to beat Bowyer by 0.579 seconds at the line.

“I ran out of gas going into turn one for some reason, it just didn’t pick up the fuel in the tank and (Kyle Busch) could have run all over the top of me and he didn’t,” said Gordon. “Then on that last restart, the tires spun so bad that Clint Bowyer could have gone right by me and he gave me a big shot in the rear bumper and that kind of got me going again.”

Bowyer’s runner-up finish was his third top-two finish in the last five races and his career-best finish at Lowe’s

“Yeah, he spun the tires and I kind of backpedaled a little bit and got a good run on him and I just didn’t pull it down quick enough,” said Bowyer. “He slipped and I was gaining on him too fast and got into the back of him instead of going underneath him.”

Bowyer is still third in the title hunt as the top four in the Chase for the Nextel Cup standings remain unchanged. Stewart holds fourth, followed by Edwards, Kyle Busch, Kurt Busch, Harvick, Hamlin, Burton, Martin Truex, Jr. and Kenseth.

Results

+ Set by Owner Points
* Denotes Rookie

Feedback can be sent to feedback@autoracing1.com