Once the red flag was lifted, the field was re-stacked with Larson and Kevin Harvick on the front row, followed by Busch and Johnson on row two for a five-lap sprint to the finish.
Logano pitted for fresh tires after the incident with Edwards and nailed the restart, charging from eighth to third on half-lap fresher tires as Johnson soared to second on the outside lane. However, one final restart would be on tap after Stenhouse’s spin off turn two that brought out the caution and set up the overtime finish.
Larson held on for second in the end after leading 132 laps, followed by Harvick and Logano, whose fourth-place finish cemented a career-best second place in the championship standings.
“Todd made a great call,” the 26-year-old said. “I would never had thought of coming to pit road to get tires and to tape this thing off and go for it. I had a good restart and was able to gain some track position. Then I passed the 4 (Harvick) off of turn two and I wish I hadn’t. That would have given me the outside lane behind Larson, which would have allowed me to get to the outside of the 48 if that was the case.”
“It’s just amazing how close it came down to (in the end). Everyone did a great job today. We recovered after a bad incident and the restart before that. We gave ourselves a shot to win the championship and that is all you can ask for. Second really, really stinks. There is no other good way to put it. It just hurts right now … but it’s motivation for next year and we are going to come back and get that championship.”
Busch faded to sixth on the final restart, coming home third in the championship ahead of Edwards, who ended the night out of the race in 34th.
“We got railroaded there on that second to last restart and I didn’t get the best of restarts, but then the 22 (Logano) came out of nowhere right up through the middle and got me really tight and then really loose down into the corner. I just kind of got behind those guys and then we started to lose ground to the rest of the guys that were around us.”
“I wish we had more, but it wasn’t meant to be tonight. This team was up and down for much of the night … but this M&Ms team had great fight all year long and we did all of the things we needed to do. We battled hard tonight and we were in position a couple of times. It just wasn’t meant to be.
Tony Stewart finished 22nd in his final Sprint Cup race before retirement, two laps down at the checkered flag.
