<
>

Jimmie Johnson breaks his top-5, 14-race slump at Bristol

Jimmie Johnson crossed the finish line in third place at Bristol Motor Speedway on Monday. Jerry Markland/Getty Images

It took more than 24 hours to get there, but Kyle Busch tasted victory again at Bristol Motor Speedway. That's not too surprising, since it's the seventh time he's done that in Cup series competition, and the 21st time across the three NASCAR national touring series (Cup, Xfinity and Truck).

It's the 150th Cup series win for Joe Gibbs Racing, the third team to hit that mark, joining Petty Enterprises and Hendrick Motorsports.

Let's go a little deeper down the running order to see the best of the weekend and Monday at Bristol.

Johnson busts one slump

Jimmie Johnson's career-long 30-race winless streak continues as he approaches the one-year anniversary of his last win. This drought is now six races longer than his previous high-water mark.

But Johnson did manage to end a 14-race stretch without a top-5 finish. Not to be an alarmist, but in his past 36 races (a one-season sample size), he has just one win, three top-5 and 10 top-10 finishes with 90 laps led. Those marks are nowhere near championship level.

One bright side for the Hendrick Motorsports crew is that they put two cars in the top five after entering this race with just a single top-5 finish on the season. Alex Bowman picked up his first career top-5 and became the 23rd Hendrick driver to reach that mark.

Bubba Wallace continues to impress

Darrell Wallace Jr. led for six laps in the final stage at Bristol, overtaking Brad Keselowski for that honor before the eventual winner passed him. Sure, he finished 16th after a tire strategy didn't work out, but that's not the story.

The story is that Wallace became the first African-American driver (that we know of, since ethnicity isn't an official statistic) to lead laps in a Cup series event since Wendell Scott picked up his only win in December 1963 at Speedway Park in Jacksonville, Florida.

Those six laps led are also more than the two Richard Petty Motorsports cars had all of last season.

Should Blaney lead fewer laps?

Way back on Sunday, Ryan Blaney led 100 laps before getting wrecked out from the lead after a pair of lapped cars tangled in front of him.

Blaney now has led 100 laps in four races in his career, but he didn't win any of them. In fact, he's finished in the top five in only one of those four, earlier this year at Martinsville. In his win last year at Pocono, Blaney led just 10 laps.

Three of those 100-laps-led, no-win races have come this season: Daytona, Martinsville and Bristol. Leading that many laps in a race without winning one is a rarity.

Last year, Chase Elliott had three races in the entire season where he led triple-digit laps without a win, but only once since 2005 has a driver had more in a winless season. That would be Jeff Gordon, who in 2010 led 100 or more laps in four races but never won.