CONCORD, N.C. -- After a 24-race dry spell, Hendrick Motorsports landed back in Victory Lane Sunday on their home turf at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
While Jimmie Johnson led 155 laps en route to the win, a couple of his other teammates were not as fortunate in Sunday's rollercoaster of a race.
Below are some lessons learned from the Bank of America 500.
BOUNCING BACK
Sunday, Johnson brought the longest winless streak of his 15-year career to an end; a total of 24 races without a victory.
"We're realists," Johnson said about the team's summertime lull. "We don't sugar‑coat things internally. We were not happy with where our cars were during the summer. We're definitely very optimistic now."
While Johnson led laps in eight of those 24 races -- including 118 laps at Chicago and 90 laps at Dover -- that next win eluded him for much of the 2016 season since his last in Fontana, California.
"The performance we had at Dover, Chicago, I look at Chicago and Dover and think we could have won those two races, as well," Johnson continued. "Loudon was a decent race for us, but we're doing what we need to, and that brings a lot of optimism to the team."
Johnson's crew chief Chad Knaus said that a lot of meetings took place in order to diagnose where the team was having issues.
"What we did do was try to get together with all the heads of state," Knaus said. "You've got the crew chiefs, you've got the management group at Hendrick Motorsports, Kenny Francis and so on and so forth, and what we were trying to do was identify where our weaknesses were, and once we started to hone in on where we thought we needed to get some gains, we started to allocate the resources to where we needed it."
Johnson said it was a real group effort from everyone at Hendrick Motorsports as they leaned on their other team members.
"We've always been very good teammates, but the way in which all four drivers and crew chiefs and even the engineers on the teams are working together and helping each other, it's spectacular," Johnson said. "That's what it takes and we've obviously made some good improvements through it and look forward to what we can do in the future with it."
CONSISTENCY IS KEY
After falling to just inside the top 20 from his 12th-place starting position early in the race, Kasey Kahne used pit road to his advantage and grabbed a top-15 restart position.
However, pit road ended up landing the driver a lap down after the 100-lap mark in the race and Kahne had to battle back, taking a wave-around to regain a lead-lap position.
“It was quite the battle to get there," said Kahne. "We had our work cut out for us."
Kahne and the No. 5 Great Clips team worked hard throughout the next 200 laps of the race to find a top-10 running position. He avoided the late-race, red-flag incident and maintained his position, moving inside the top five following a speedy pit stop by the No. 5 team and gained two positions before taking home a third-place result.
"We got to where we were a lot better the first 30 laps of a run the last three runs there," Kahne said. "That helped us get some track position and avoid a couple of those wrecks."
The top-five finish comes on the tail end of string of top-10s. In five of the last six races, Kahne has logged a top-10 finish, showing consistency from the No. 5 team.
"It was a strong day," Kahne said. "We did pretty good. We fought hard; the team had great pit stops all day also.”
STRONG RACE CARS
Although the end result was not what he was hoping for, Chase Elliott -- a Round of 12 Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup competitor -- said his No. 24 3M Chevrolet SS was perhaps the best race car he's driven all season.
"I was really proud of that," Elliott said. "Everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, Hendrick Engine Shop, 3M, all of our partners, we have been working hard at trying to get better. This was definitely proving it today."
The rookie's day ended prematurely after being involved in a late-race incident that brought out the red flag.
"I think those guys were just trying to get some track position," Elliott said of the cause of the incident. "You can’t blame them for trying to win a race. We recognize that. It’s unfortunate for us, but we just have to have more race cars like we had today and I think we will be fine.”
Elliott heads to Kansas this weekend -- the second race of the Round of 12 -- as one of many Chase drivers who saw trouble in the first race of the round. However, he said his team knows what they need to do.
"Hopefully we can just try to have another car like we had today and not make any mistakes next week,” the driver said.