by Lee Spencer

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Johnson had the lead on Lap 261 when David Gilliland's car blew up to bring out the ninth caution of the night. With Busch and Kevin Harvick in Johnson's rearview mirror, the No. 18 pushed the No. 48 down the frontstretch on the restart, then pulled up to the top lane to run side-by-side on the backstretch before completing the pass in Turn 4. In clean air, Busch had no problem holding the point to the finish.

"We don't freakin' quit," Busch said over the radio as he celebrated his 11th career win in 133 Cup starts. "Thanks for putting up with me. I know I'm a pain in the (butt) sometimes, but you'll have that with a punk."

Despite leading a race-high 165 laps, Busch fought a loose car throughout the middle of the race that had him reporting on Lap 210 when he was behind Carl Edwards, "Dude, I'm out of control." When Edwards developed a tire issue and fell off the pace, Busch regained the lead on Lap 212.

Johnson passed the No. 18 Toyota with 16 laps remaining in the race and was pulling away late, but Busch followed his spotter Jeff Dickerson's advice on the final restart en route to claiming his seventh NASCAR Sprint Cup Series win of the season.

Crew chief Steve Addington reinforced the 23-year-old's philosophy.

"That's an awesome race team," Addington said. "That kid never gives up."

Johnson, who finished second, was still shaking his head as he entered the media center for his postrace comments. Johnson said if he "would have been thinking," he would have never allowed Busch to take him on the outside.

"Seeing a lot of different races won by guys just giving up the bottom, the leader just gives up the bottom and the outside you can hang on for a lap or two and surge ahead at the start/finish line," Johnson said. "I really wasn't thinking defense. We had such a good car, I thought I would get away from him on the restart, and he got a great start and was right there with me and just broke past that bumper plane through the center of one and two and that was it.

"So looking back, if I could do it over again, I would have played more defense on that restart. I thought with how we had been running, I was in good shape."

Kevin Harvick had a front row seat for the duel between Busch and Johnson. Although the No. 29 Chevrolet wasn't strong enough to knock off the front-runners, Harvick's third-place finish — his first top-five since Bristol on March 16 — elevated the No. 29 four positions to ninth in the point standings.

"I really thought the No. 48 had the dominant car and the 18 kind of bonsai-ed in there on the outside and it stuck and just kind of pinched the 48 there off in the corner and killed his momentum and was just able to keep going. I thought I might be in the right spot there coming into the last corner there but just came up a little bit short."

Greg Biffle and Tony Stewart rounded out the top-five finishers.

But for the third time in the last four weeks, Shrubby was the show. With the M&M's support cast, Busch kept on digging to extend his points lead by 262 markers over Dale Earnhardt Jr., who finished 16th.

With seven races remaining before the Chase for the Sprint Cup, Busch said the key to staying focused is maintaining a modest approach.

"Being able to win one race a year or two races a year, you try so hard and yet you get so down on yourself becasue you can't and now this year, it's just like, 'Wow, this is something that's crazy,' " Busch said.

"You know this doesn't come along very often. I know Jimmie won I think 10 races in the past two years and Jeff's done it in the past. This, to me, I never dreamed of it for myself. You always see it happen with somebody else and you feel good about them being able to do that and Jimmie last year. I was over there and I was like, 'Man, what do we have to do to get some wins here? He's just taking them all.'

"Now that feeling has come upon me. I know how he felt. You have to stay humble and yet stay hungry and go out there and do what you can in order to survive in these races and to survive up front and try to win. Somehow, it's paying off and it's working out and I'm just so proud of the effort."

Great night all around for Toyota

Tony Stewart scored his first top-five finish since five races ago at Michigan International Speedway, but he was also in contention throughout the LifeLock.com 400. Stewart took the lead on Lap 93 and held the point for 11 circuits.

"We weren't bad," Stewart said. "We just got in a situation where we got free there the last couple runs and that's when we needed to be really good, and we just fought loose for some reason.

"So, we never did get it tight enough on entry and exit — we got it too tight in the center at the end. We were just a little bit off — we were close though."

While success was almost expected from Joe Gibbs Racing — whether the company has switched manufacturers from Chevrolet or not, Red Bull Racing is a completely different story. In just its second season on the tour, RBR has made tremendous gains since last year with Jay Frye at the helm. Frye moved veteran crew chief Kevin Hamlin to the No. 83 at the start of the season and driver Brian Vickers has remained in the top 20 in points all year. With his sixth-place finish Saturday, Vickers climbed to 14th in the point standings.

"We were really good on long runs but not on restarts," Vickers said. "During the last stop we made adjustments to help the restarts. The car was good and we could have competed for the win with a little track position. We definitely had a top-five car.

"Unfortunately, the engine blew on the last lap. We were down a cylinder on the restart, so those guys got a jump on us. Then, the engine finally blew coming out of Turn Four on the last lap, and we coasted across the finish line. We ended up sixth, so it could have been worse. It was a good points day for us."

Jimmy Elledge made a solid debut as crew chief for the No. 84 and A.J. Allmendinger. With the drivers starting by points, Allmendinger rolled off 39th but moved up into the top five before halfway. In the closing laps, Allmendinger battled four-time champion Jeff Gordon like it was routine before finishing 13th.

It was apparent that the driver and crew chief had quickly developed a rapport.

"It was good," Allmendinger said. "Starting that far back we knew we were going to have to work a little strategy. The car was pretty good — it was a little bit tight all night. Jimmy kept making good adjustments on it — small adjustments — that kept making it a little bit better. But, we were like an eighth-to-12th-place car. I think if we just could have gotten that tightness out of it we could have been right around top five. He made a great call to kind of lead me out and get that track position. With these cars it seems like track position is everything. So, you take a 25th-place car that is okay and you're running fifth and it seems pretty good.

"I had more information than I ever could imagine. I knew exactly where I was running the whole time, what lap times I was running, and what the guys near me and behind me were running. It's everything I could ask for and it seems like it makes driving so much easier. I love knowing what's going on. His experience level — it's great to have that and learn from that."

The best car doesn't always win

While three Roush Fenway Racing cars finished among the top eight, Carl Edwards appeared to be the class of the field in the No. 99 before he pitted on Lap 212 when he felt a vibration and believed a tire was going down. Instead of a tire, Edwards was experiencing problems with his splitter and as a result dropped to 33rd, one lap down. He was never able to return to the lead lap and finished 32nd, yet he remains fourth in the standings.

Teammate Matt Kenseth's timing was considerably better. Kenseth was leading on Lap 117 but lost the point to Busch on Lap 121. Three laps later, he felt a tire going down and was forced to pit under green. Kenseth cycled out 39th, one lap down. He won the "Lucky Dog" following the fifth caution on Lap 183 and restarted 30th before battling through traffic to climb into the top 10 by Lap 235. In the final 30 laps, Kenseth improved to seventh and jumped to eighth in the point standings — his best position of the season.

"These (cars) are a lot tougher to pass with," said Kenseth, who scored his eight top 10 in the last nine races. "They just get so tight. We just had that flat tire and there were a lot of green-flag running, and it took us a long time for us to get our lap back, and then we just sort of ran out of time. Overall, it was a great night. We had a really fast car, we just couldn't get quite the finish we thought."

David Ragan (eighth) scored his second consecutive top 10, but Greg Biffle topped the organization with a fourth-place run. After Biffle's misfortune last weekend at Daytona, where he finished 43rd, his sixth top-five of 2008 vaulted the No. 16 four positions in the point standings to seventh with just seven races remaining before the Chase.

"We had a great car, but just track position again, unfortunately," Biffle said. "This 3M Ford Fusion did a great job. We had pretty good pit stops. We just needed the track position. We took two tires and were gone, and we're just going to have to figure out how stay up front."