LAS VEGAS — Carl Edwards raced to his second win in six days, holding off Dale Earnhardt Jr. on a pair of late restarts today at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Edwards, who scored his first win of the season in Monday's rain-postponed event in California, celebrated win No. 2 with his trademark backflip. The victory moved Edwards to the top of the Sprint Cup points standings for the first time in his career.

It was the fifth victory for team owner Jack Roush in Las Vegas, and ended Jimmie Johnson's string of three straight wins in the desert.

Edwards caught a break to be in position to win, escaping a penalty when one of his tires rolled onto pit road during a late service stop. NASCAR ruled that a television cameraman shooting from inside the pit box was in the way of crew members and it contributed to the tire breaking free.

The decision kept Edwards in contention to run for the win, but two late restarts gave the competition a chance to run down his No. 99 Ford.

Kurt Busch's wreck with 11 laps to go brought out the caution, and Edwards was in front of Earnhardt on the restart with five to go. But Earnhardt appeared to spin his tires at the start, and Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon had to split his car to avoid running into him.

As Gordon and Kenseth raced side-by-side, Edwards pulled away. Then Gordon drifted into the side of Kenseth's car, starting a spin that led to Gordon slamming into the inside wall. His Chevrolet broke into tons of part and pieces, and NASCAR had to red-flag the race to clean the debris.

That set up a two-lap sprint to the finish, but the wait time cooled Earnhardt's tires and he was unable to mount a charge on Edwards on the restart. Earnhardt's losing streak stretched to 64 races.

"The red flag just really killed us," said Earnhardt, who settled for second. "We were terrible on cold tires. It's real frustrating."

Greg Biffle was third and was followed by the Richard Childress Racing cars of Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton. Kasey Kahne was sixth, followed by David Ragan, Travis Kvapil, Denny Hamlin and Mark Martin.

Kyle Busch, who was trying to become the first driver to win from the pole at Las Vegas, struggled with adjustments to his Toyota the entire race and had to settle for 11th on his hometown track.

Johnson, the two-time defending series champion, was looking for a fourth straight win in the desert. But his team struggled the entire weekend, he fell two laps down in the race and finished 29th.

Two-time series champion Tony Stewart bruised his foot 108 laps into the race when his right front tire failed and he hit the wall for the second-straight day.

"I was kind of worried, my legs, my entire legs from my hips down were just tingling," Stewart said. "And I had pain in my lower back and that kind of scared me a little bit. I've not had my legs tingle like that before.

"I was kind of worried about, 'What's going on here?'"

He slowly climbed from his car and gingerly walked with the assistance of two emergency personnel into a waiting car that took him to the infield care center. He said the tingling sensation had improved before he left the care center, and said he still planned to participate in the Cup test scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in Phoenix.

"It's going to be a miserable next two days," he said. "I was already sore. We'll do what we've got to do the next two days."