Tony Stewart wins NASCAR Sprint Cup race in a rare thriller at Fontana

A glance at NASCAR’s Chase for the Cup after Sunday’s race, in which Jimmie Johnson slightly widened his lead in the playoff, might suggest it was another ho-hum affair at a track often chided for lackluster racing.

It was just the opposite.

In perhaps the most exciting race at Auto Club Speedway in years, Tony Stewart held off Clint Bowyer and Johnson in a two-lap shootout at the finish to win the Pepsi Max 400, the fourth race in the 10-race Chase.

And Stewart’s win, the two-time champion’s first at the two-mile oval in Fontana, came after several of the other 12 Chase drivers found disaster that badly damaged their hopes of winning the Sprint Cup Series championship.

They included Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch, his brother Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth, all of whom now find themselves behind by 140 points or more with six Chase races left.

By finishing third, Johnson moved 36 points ahead of Denny Hamlin and 54 ahead of Kevin Harvick.

Jeff Gordon is fourth, 85 points back, after he nearly derailed what was shaping up to be a strong finish when he was penalized for speeding on pit road, dropping him to 25th. “I’m sorry about that, guys,” Gordon radioed to his crew. But the four-time champion rallied to salvaged a ninth-place finish.

Stewart jumped from 10th to fifth in the Chase with his victory. Although he’s 107 points behind Johnson, he still has time to deny Johnson’s bid for an unprecedented fifth consecutive championship.

“I definitely think we’re still in this thing,” said Stewart, who co-owns the Stewart-Haas Racing team that builds his No. 14 Chevrolet.

Because he was 127 points behind Johnson when he arrived in Southern California, Stewart said crew chief Darian Grubb was fearless in making big changes to the handling of his car, moves that paid off.

“We have the flexibility to just look forward and not worry about if we take a gamble and it doesn’t work,” Stewart said.

Now it’s other Chase drivers who find themselves in a deep hole, notably three Ford drivers for Roush Fenway Racing: Biffle, Edwards and Kenseth.

Only a week after Biffle won at Kansas, his car blew an engine and was being hauled out of Auto Club Speedway before Sunday’s race was half over. He finished 41st in the 43-car field.

Edwards’ car stalled on a restart and lost several laps for repairs, leaving him 34th. Kenseth also had engine problems and finished 30th.

Kyle Busch was running fifth when his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota lost an engine, and Busch -- now ninth in the Chase, 187 points behind Johnson, after finishing 35th -- radioed to his team that his title hopes were “certainly over now.”

His older brother Kurt also was running strong when he collided with David Ragan with seven laps left in the 200-lap race.

That set up the final restart with two laps left, with Stewart taking the lead and Bowyer squeezing by Johnson for second place.

“I was taking big chunks off Tony’s lead right before that caution came out,” said Johnson, a five-time winner at Fontana.

Regardless, he said, “If we can leave the race track with a top-three each week, we’ll be where we want to at Homestead” in Florida, site of the season finale Nov. 21.

Hamlin, meanwhile, had to start the race in the rear because of a transmission change on his No. 11 Toyota, but he fought back and finished eighth to stay second in the Chase.

“All in all it’s a decent day,” Hamlin said. “Can’t be too disappointed with it, especially from where we started.”

The Fontana track has staged two Cup races a year since 2004, but after sagging attendance at the 92,000-seat facility in recent years, NASCAR will hold one race there next season, in late March. NASCAR estimated Sunday’s attendance at 70,000.

Several factors are blamed for the declines, including the poor economy and racing that often provided too little passing. But while there were the usual stretches of single-file racing Sunday, there also were 23 lead changes among 14 drivers and nine caution periods that bunched the field for hair-raising restarts.

“The restarts early in the race were out of control,” Stewart said. “We were five wide. I thought the racing was good today.”

james.peltz@latimes.com