Early dominator Joey Logano wound up second in the Team Penske No. 22 Ford. Martin Truex Jr., rookie Chase Elliott and defending series champ Kyle Busch completed the top five.
The event started nearly six hours late because of rain showers that began at the conclusion of the national anthem. That delay pushed the eighth of 10 races in the Chase for the Nascar Sprint Cup playoffs from a daytime start (2 p.m. ET) to a nighttime event.
Logano had the strongest car early, leading 178 of the first 188 laps in the Team Penske No. 22 Ford. He remained in contention the rest of the day and leaves Texas as the top points-earner behind Johnson.
"I mean, when you're that close to winning and you lead the most laps, second stings," Logano said after his fourth runner-up finish of the season. "That's our goal every week, is to win. Anything short of that is a failure. I feel like we were so close to that today."
Kyle Busch rallied from mid-race adversity to salvage a top-five finish. He lost ground during a lengthy pit stop during the fifth caution as his crew repaired front-end damage on the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota. The team patched an area just under the front bumper after Busch hit a loose brake duct on the backstretch.
Austin Dillon, who won the Coors Light Pole Award in Friday's qualifying, led the opening five laps as the race began under green-yellow conditions to accelerate track-drying efforts. He recovered from a Lap 255 spin that caused the race's sixth caution period, but crashed seven laps later after Turn 4 contact with Kevin Harvick sent him to the garage and an eventual 37th-place finish.
Sunday night's race left a jumbled Chase picture. Logano is third in the Chase standings, but by the slimmest of margins. He's even with Kyle Busch on points but currently holds the tiebreaker on the basis of the runner-up finish at Texas. And Matt Kenseth and ninth-place finisher Denny Hamlin are a dangerous one and two points behind Logano, respectively.
Harvick likely needs a victory next Sunday at Phoenix to advance to the Championship 4 for the third straight year. The 2014 champion, who fought a tight handling condition for most of the race, holds a series-record eight wins at the Arizona oval, a number that includes five of the last six races.
Harvick trails Logano and Kyle Busch by 18 points entering the final race of the Chase's Round of 8.
Stewart-Haas teammate Kurt Busch likewise is in a near must-win position. Busch finished 20th on Sunday and enters the Phoenix race eighth in the Chase standings, 34 points behind his brother.
Contributing: Wire reports
SOURCE: Nascar.COM