Johnson wins first Prelude race

Johnson battled Kyle Busch through 14 cautions and 29 green flag laps of the 30-lap feature, including the final restart. With the absence of the starting cone, which was picked up by David Reutimann's car on the previous caution, Carl Edwards surmised, "no cone, no rules."

On the last circuit, Clint Bowyer dove to the bottom of the track with Edwards and Denny Hamlin behind him, but Johnson held off the charge and sprinted convincingly to the checkered flag.

"The top is where I needed to be," Johnson said. "Once I cleared (Kyle) on the initial start, I was trying to protect that. I saw him a couple times on the bottom, but knew he was going to struggle with the drive off. If I stayed smooth on the top and kept my momentum it was going to work out."

Bowyer, who was the top qualifier with a time of 16.076-seconds, maintained second-place at the finish with Edwards, Busch and Hamlin rounding out the top-five. Wednesday night's host and three-time Prelude winner Tony Stewart finished sixth.

"It was time to go," Bowyer said. "There were only two more laps. You had to try something but it was a risky move. You're either going to go down there and it's going to stick and you're going to pass him or you're going to get passed twice. Carl got up in between us and it was dicey. He chose to go one way and I just had to shoot across and try to slide him and I got it. It was fun."

Where does Johnson rate his latest accomplishment?

"It's high man, it is so high," said Johnson.

"He had the high line," Edwards said. "He had all the momentum. But Jimmie stopped surprising me a long time ago. He's pretty fast. I've rode dirt bikes with him before. Nothing he does surprises me."

The sixth annual Gillette Fusion ProGlide Prelude to the Dream benefited four Children's Hospitals with drivers broken down into teams representing each facility. Johnson's win resulted in 40-percent of the proceeds going to Levine Children's Hospital in Charlotte, N.C. and donations will also be awarded to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, St. Jude's Research Hospital in Memphis and Cincinnati Children's.

Strange Twist

After Kasey Kahne's engine blew earlier in the night, he ended up running the feature in the No. 5 instead of the No. 9 car and finished eighth.

Strange coincidence?

"This was the back-up car," Kahne said. "It just happened to be the 5. I thought it was really ironic. It's just what they pulled out. I didn't mind driving it, that's for sure."

"But I'll be in the 5 in 2012. That's all I know."

Trading Places

Jeff Gordon's crew chief Steve Letarte was off the box and working as a pit reporter for the Prelude on HBO. Letarte admitted he liked the privilege "of asking drivers questions and knowing that they would have to answer."

After qualifying, Letarte said to his driver, "if you're going to talk (crap), you're going to have to back it up." Although Gordon qualified 12th out of 27 drivers he finished the feature 24th.