AJ Allmendinger wins the 2014 Cheez-It 355 at The Glen

In a furious back-and-forth with Marcos Ambrose, it was AJ Allmendinger who prevailed Sunday at Watkins Glen International.

Over the final laps, the two exchanged the lead several times. But with two laps remaining Ambrose got loose, allowing Allmendinger to pull ahead. Kurt Busch finished third followed by Kyle Larson and Carl Edwards.

“I knew Marcos was going to try to move me out of the way if he had the opportunity,” Allmendinger said. “To his credit he didn’t wreck me. He just moved me like he should have. I went down into the next corner and leaned on him a little bit to see if I could get a gap and get them racing behind me. I knew if I could just get a three- or four-car length gap, they weren’t going to get back to me. That was just a fun race.”

The victory was the first of Allmendinger’s career and virtually assures he qualifies for the Chase for the Sprint Cup. It was also the first win for JTG Daugherty Racing, a single-car team.

“All I’ve wanted to do for the last how many years is win a Sprint Cup race,” Allmendinger said. “It’s so hard. For this race team, Tad and Jodi Geschickter (co-owners) and everybody at this No. 47 team to win our first Cup race together, that means the world to me.”

A pair of red flags stretched the Cheez-It 355 to nearly four hours. The first stoppage at one hour, 20 minutes in length came for a savage wreck involving Ryan Newman and Michael McDowell, both of whom slammed guardrails out of the high-speed Turn 5.

Neither driver was injured, though Newman raised safety concerns about the lack of absorbent SAFER barriers around the 2.45-mile course.

“SAFER barrier doesn’t exist here, there are no concrete walls,” Newman said. “It’s just a very antiquated race track and the safety is not at all up to NASCAR’s standards and it’s a shame that we have to have accidents like that to prove it. Hopefully something will change the next time we come back.”

The second delay came when Denny Hamlin backed into the sand barrels entering pit road with five laps to go, while Alex Kennedy wrecked on another portion of the track.

Finishing sixth through 10th were Joey Logano, Kevin Harvick, Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth and Brian Vickers.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. was 11th. He captured the championship points lead from pole-sitter Jeff Gordon, who lost power mid-race and finished 34th. Earnhardt holds a five-point advantage with four regular season races remaining.

“I’ve got to get with the team and find out what caused it,” Gordon said. “It looks like we had a battery go dead, two batteries go dead. I didn’t see anything on the volts meter that stood out or anything really going on there that was alarming. ... I would rather these things happen now so we can determine what caused it and make sure it doesn’t happen again because you can’t have those kinds of things happen once this Chase starts.”