Bank of America 500 at Lowe's - A short recap

The writing was on the wall, the turn 4 wall that is. Turn 4 was labelled by the broadcast as calamity corner, and that title sure held up as we saw our first caution before the 1st lap even completed with David Reutimann smacking the wall in turn.

The pole sitter, Ryan Newman, led the first few laps, a few laps in the end, but smacked the wall before attaining the much desired win.

The racing wasn't too bad for the night, but some chase contenders did not fare too well.

At the front of the race, a few contenders showed their hand early, as Jamie McMurray took the lead for a while and Jimmie Johnson took over the house on lap 17 but through various yellow flag events, the lead changed hands often.

Kevin Harvick had pitted under green on lap 32, thinking he had a right side tire going down. It was a bad call as he had to pit again under green on lap 43 to replace all 4 tires. Two stops under green doomed him for the rest of the night.

Through out the night, Jimmie Johnson kept showing up front after the race restarts showing he had the car to chase, not beat but after a spin on lap 232, he wasn't the contender we were all hoping for.

Matt Kenseth did not have a good night at all. Around lap 65, the first of Matt Kenseth's woes kicked in with a bad battery. By lap 157, he smacked the wall hard in turn 4, and again later on in the race. Sadly, he was toast for the night.

Pit road proved to be a mix-it-up zone for Kurt Busch and Tony Stewart. (No, they didn't hit each other)

On lap 190, Kurt Busch hit Mark Martin as he pulled out of the pits, messing up his right front fender, but by lap 275, he lost a cylinder and the team couldn't do much about it under green flag stops.

Tony Stewart had worse issues, as on lap 176 one car pulls down in front of him and scrapes his Rf, but than as Tony gets going again, Kasey Kahne, with the pit road momentum, pulls in, and Tony hits and spins him, causing sufficient RF damage to the 20 car to warrant repair issues with lots and lots of tape.

Denny Hamlin ran into gearing problems late in the race, and on lap 323 Jeff Green spews oil and brings out a red flag.

Here's where the drama starts.. it seems Jeff Gordon started having what he thought were fuel pickup issues and thought he was running out of gas, but his crew chief said he shouldn't be.. and on the restart of lap 329, Gordon slowed, holding up the front contenders and Ryan Newman, right place, right time, flew past the group on the outside to take a big lead.... but lost it in turn 2 on lap 331.

On the ensuing restart, Jeff Gordon had the same problem again, but Clint Bowyer, having now where to go, ended up bump drafting him into keeping the lead and once up to speed, that's all she wrote for the winning hopefuls.

Jeff Gordon won the race, followed by Clint Bowyer, Kyle Busch, Jeff Burton & Carl Edwards. You can see the entire results at nascar.com