Jimmie Johnson’s 83rd career win will have to wait another week.

Dangling in front of Johnson with two laps to go in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the possible victory was ripped away when fuel tank sputtered off Turn 2. It was enough to spoil what would have been his third win of the year, and send him plummeting down the leaderboard.

“I didn’t know we were thinking fuel,” Johnson said. “I could have done a lot better job with the front side of the run to put us in a better position. Then when I got the news about saving fuel, I did all that I could from that point and just came up a little bit short.”

Johnson inherited the race lead when crew chief Chad Knaus kept the No. 48 on track as the frontrunners peeled off for their final stops inside 35 laps to go. With others like Austin Dillon – who went on to win the race – Joey Logano and Ryan Newman doing the same, Johnson was able to play with a significant lead over the dominant Martin Truex Jr.

As Knaus coached him through the final few laps of managing the gap and rolling out of the gas early among other things, Truex did his best to close in. Instead, it ended up being Dillon who pounced when Johnson stumbled.

That was the bad news. The good news is Johnson again appeared back in familiar form at Charlotte. After winning the playoff race at the speedway last fall, Johnson and Knaus brought another fast Chevrolet that led 35 laps. At times, Johnson was even able to stalk the dominant Truex for the top spot.

“A strong performance for the car,” Johnson said. “Had a couple of weird things go on on some restarts where I lost some track position. I think the 17 (Ricky Stenhouse Jr.) spun the tires really bad in front of us and I went from, I don’t know, the third or fourth row to way back.

“So, I had to fight back through some of that, but we still had a look at a win on fuel strategy and I don’t even know where we finished. I don’t see myself on the board, so it can’t be very good.” He finished 17th.

A rebound shouldn’t be hard to come by this weekend when the series visits Dover International Speedway, where Johnson is a 10-time winner.