Kahne lasted a full one corner in the lead before Kyle Busch sailed through, quickly opening a lead of more than two seconds before Ryan Newman's engine failure in the second Penske entry brought the yellow flags out again and sent the leaders to pit road for what could have been their final stops.
With the pressure on the pit crews once again Truex Jr's crew performed best as the #1 entry got back on track first followed by the #2 of Busch Sr, the #5 of Busch Jr, Kenseth's #17 Roush-Fenway machine and Johnson, who had been content to sit on the outskirts of the top ten until this point.
The green flag waved again on lap 272 with Kyle Busch once again the man on the move, taking the lead from Truex on lap 280. Truex fought back quickly and reclaimed top spot four laps later before another flurry of near-paint swapping left Kyle out front again two laps later. With Kenseth and Kurt Busch demoting Truex to fourth shortly afterwards everyone's attention now turned to their fuel mileage as 53 laps was pushing the boundaries of both fuel consumption and tyre life.
With the top four running in unison as the race entered its final laps it seemed as though Kurt Busch would have to pit while Kenseth was among the list of drivers who were gambling on staying out. However it all became academic on lap 318 when Johnny Sauter became the latest in a long list of drivers to suffer a right front tyre failure and brought out the 12th caution of the day.
The fact that every one of the lead lap cars except Denny Hamlin chose to pit spoke volumes about what would have happened I the final laps had the race stayed green but the order was still shuffled immensely as some teams chose two new tyres while others, including both Busch brothers, Kenseth and Truex Jr, took four fresh Goodyear's.
![Jimmie Johnson - Kobalt/Lowe's Chevrolet [pic credit: GM media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/300233.jpg)
