CONCORD, N.C. -- In 24 years of the All-Star race, crashes have dominated the highlight reel. Rusty Wallace and Darrell Waltrip in 1989; Davey Allison winning and then spending the night in the hospital in 1992; even last season's event had two crashes, highlighted by the Busch brothers' tangle.

But the 2008 Sprint All-Star Race will go down in history as the first one since 2001 to not have a DNF due to a crash. Twenty-two of the 24 cars finished on the lead lap with the only DNFs belonging to Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin, both for engine problems.

"It's nice that nobody had to crash [Saturday night]," said Tony Stewart, who finished fifth. "Normally this thing is a wreck-fest so that was nice.

"You had what you had; it wasn't like you really had options. You couldn't run as close as you normally would and that probably kept everybody from having problems."

Two-time All-Star winner and fourth-place finisher Jimmie Johnson had his own theory on the lack of accidents in this year's race.

"It's almost a full moon, too, so I don't know what happened [Saturday night], but we did it," Johnson said with a laugh.

Johnson's Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon struggled with his car all evening, finishing 15th. He was in awe that there were no cautions due to a crash -- with the way his car was handling, he thought he would be the cause.

"It's unbelievable. I'm shocked, I'm absolutely shocked," Gordon said. "Because I thought I was going to be the first caution in the first corner. I was completely sideways off Turn 2 for the first half of the first segment, had my hands full. I thought for sure other guys would have, too, so I'm shocked there weren't any cautions."

This is the first time the All-Star race has had four 25-lap segments and Gordon thinks that may have contributed to the clean race.

"I think it's more exciting for the fans to have a 10-lap shootout," Gordon said. "I think right now the guys are saying, 'I don't have to push hard if my car is good, I can let my car come to me and make the pass when I'm not bunched up on the restart.' I think with 10 to go you gotta go as soon as they drop the green and go hammer down."

Johnson said the car was the reason the race stayed accident-free because it's still too hard to pass in the new car.

"These big tracks, it's really tough to race side-by-side with these cars so I really felt like the track came into its own," Johnson said. "We had a good tire; I think we had the best situation to put on competitive racing. It's just so hard to catch people and run in traffic."

Tenth-place finisher Carl Edwards held the lead for 12 laps during the second segment and said credit goes to the drivers.

"There's some good drivers, that's the deal," Edwards said. "I know I crashed a couple times, I just didn't hit anything. That's the way it is, these guys are good. Everybody did a great job."

Race-winner Kasey Kahne saw his share of crashes when both his Gillett Evernham teammates -- Patrick Carpentier (video) and Elliott Sadler (video) -- ended their nights after hitting the wall in the Sprint Showdown.

So after starting the race 24th due to being the Fan Vote winner, Kahne's strategy revolved around seeing some on-track carnage.

"I was surprised," Kahne said. "When the race went green, I was 24th and Tony [Stewart] backed up and I backed up to him a little bit and we just rode there for three or four laps just kind of waiting for everyone to get their cars pointed straight and start racing. I was surprised there were no wrecks."

As the race wound down, Kahne found himself up front and a late-race crash was the last thing he wanted to see. So he was thankful everyone stayed out of trouble and agreed with Edwards that the drivers get the credit.

"At the end, once I took the lead I was going, 'man, no cautions, no cautions,'" Kahne said. "The last thing I wanted was a restart and to have somebody starting beside me, that was the last thing I wanted. So I was just hoping for no cautions and we didn't have any and it worked out perfect for us.

"Everybody drove a great race to not have cautions."