The final laps of Sunday's Camping World RVs 400 at the Kansas Speedway came down to a battle between championship contenders Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards. The drivers one and two in the series standings showed just how much winning the championship means as they fought for the win late in the race.

With Edwards better on the longer runs, the Knaus-led Hendrick Motorsports pit crew got the job done on the final pit stop of the day as they were able to beat the No. 99 off pit road with less than fifty laps to go. With clean air, Johnson was able to pull away on the restart, opening up a bit of a cushion between himself and Edwards in second.

Then Edwards seemed to come out of nowhere with two laps remaining and put the heat on the driver of the No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet. Trying to figure out which line would work best, Edwards hit on something and began to close the gap.

Charging hard into the third turn on the final lap, Edwards dove to the inside of Johnson for the lead. As Edwards made his move, Johnson simply backed off a bit and watched as the No. 99 Office Depot Ford slid up the track and into the wall. Edwards lost all the momentum he carried into the corner was not able to make the move work, while Johnson got back to the throttle, drove under the No. 99 and away to his fifth win of the 2008 season.

"That was cool," Johnson radioed his crew after taking the checkered flag. The win boosts Johnson to the top of the point standings with seven races remaining before the championship is decided.

In those final laps Johnson was could do nothing but wonder where Edwards had come from. "Those last two laps he figured out something and found a bunch of grip," Johnson said from Victory Lane. "Man, he was there, thought I had him under control then all of a sudden he was there. Great race, I saw the slide job coming and dodged it and got a win."

"I didn't like that a whole hell of a lot," Johnson's crew chief Chad Knaus said after the race. "I love racing Carl Edwards and Bob Osborne. Their guys are great, their gentleman racers, they dig and they want it really bad. It's fun when you can beat guys like that. That's definitely one for the highlight reel."

These back-to-back champs are certainly going to be a contender when it comes down to Homestead, but for Knaus, being atop the standings does not seem to matter. "That doesn't matter, Knaus explained. "That doesn't mean anything right now. Right now all you have to do is win races and finish in the top-5 and the rest will fall in place."

For Edwards, the last lap move was a last ditch effort to score a win at his home track. "I planned on hitting the wall, but I didn't plan on the wall slowing me down that much. I play a lot of video games where you can run into the wall and hold wide open, and that's what I did, it just didn't work out quite like in the video games."

The man second in the points was visibly frustrated with his second-place finish. "I want to win this race more that any other on the schedule, I guess we'll have to wait another year."

In the points chase, Kyle Busch took another hit this week. Struggling with the engine all day, Busch was only able to salvage a finish of 28th, one lap down. Busch remains 12th in points, now a distant 311 points out of the top spot.

Busch's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Tony Stewart also took a big hit at Kansas, finishing 40th and dropping four spots in the standings to 11th, 255 points behind Johnson in first.

Next week the series heads to the "wild card" in the Chase, Talladega Superspeedway. Most Chase drivers are simply looking to avoid the "Big One" and come home with a solid finish. This Chase continues to heat up and next week it will be Alabama sun and high banks heating up the competition.