Jimmie Johnson finished fifth and was the final participant in a tense final 30 laps that saw the top five run in very close company while Jeff Green also made a two tyre gamble work to good effect as he finished sixth for Haas CNC Racing.
Richard Childress Racing teammates Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick finished seventh and eighth respectively with Harvick losing a lot of time thanks to a slow green flag pitstop just before the 200 lap mark.
Ryan Newman recovered well from a pit road penalty that dropped him from fourth to 27th to finish tenth followed by Kyle Busch, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards. Edwards' 13th place finish was especially galling for the #99 Roush-Fenway Racing Ford driver after he lost nearly a full minute on pit road under green flag conditions when his car slipped off the jacks just moments after he took the lead. After dropping to 26th Edwards got the Lucky Dog free pass on lap 253 and made up more than a dozen places in the final 40 laps.
After showing much promise in practice and qualifying Juan Montoya and Bud Pole winner Dave Blaney flattered to deceive in the race with Montoya finishing 19th and Blaney a lap down in 29th while Blaney's fellow front row starter Kurt Busch was also in the wars, clashing with rookie David Ragan on the final corner and spinning back to 21st place.
The race was slowed by just six caution periods, three for debris, one for Ward Burton's early race engine failure, one for Joe Nemechek's turn four crash and one (the last) for Bobby Labonte's coming together with David Stremme, also in turn four.
Next week the 2007 season reaches its half way point with the Pepsi 400 at
Daytona, the last restrictor plate race with the ‘old style' chassis.
![Denny Hamlin. [Pic Credit Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/192826.jpg)
