The victory came down to the final restart on lap 463 of the 500-lap, 250-mile race.
"I thought I'd be able to race with him harder for the last 15 or 20 laps. But he took off and I was a little loose off. I just couldn't get back to him to race," said Edwards of Busch.
"While we were racing for the first couple laps after the restart, it was a blast. If I'd have known that was the only shot I was going to have, I might have raced a little harder," added Carl Edwards.
For those final laps Busch and Edwards were side-by-side most of the time. Edwards did lead one lap in that stretch. All Johnson could do is sit back and hope for a wreck.
"One neat thing about this track, you can run good lap times side‑by‑side. There's just enough room to do that. These guys were digging up front and I was just waiting to see what was going to happen," said the five-time Cup champion.
There were two multi-car wrecks. The first one occurred, on lap 28, when Jeff Burton slowed involving Denny Hamlin, Jamie McMurray and four others.
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| David Reutimann, Brian Vickers and Denny Hamlin - Photo: Nascar |
On lap 436 there was another multi-car accident caused when Kevin Harvick came upon Kasey Kahne, although Harvick slowed he was struck in turn by Mark Martin causing many cars behind them to crash.
Kevin Harvick pitted "I just wanted to make sure that we had a race car left… the No. 4 (Kahne) got a little tight and the No. 5 (Martin) ran over us again. Luckily we didn't hit anything and they got the fenders off the tires," he said after finishing sixth.
Kurt Busch, Kyle’s older brother continues to hold the points lead because he’s the only driver to have top ten finishes in all of NASCAR’s races this year.