CONCORD, N.C. -- Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin came into Sunday's Coca-Cola 600 as favorites to win NASCAR's longest race, and 166 laps in to the 400-lap race, both were in the top five. But their nights took a turn for the worse on Lap 167 and neither driver was able to recover.

The events were put in motion nearly 20 laps earlier, when Johnson made his green-flag pit stop and the No. 48 team pulled a spring rubber to try and free up the car. Running fourth on Lap 167, Johnson got loose and slammed the wall on the frontstretch.

“

It's tough because I really felt like we had a car that could win [Sunday] and we never really got to show our speed.

”

-- DENNY HAMLIN

Hamlin, running fifth, had to dive to the grass to avoid hitting Johnson, and Hamlin tore up the front of his No. 11 Toyota.

"It looked like [Johnson] was struggling right there," Hamlin said after finishing 18th. "He was running the high line and I saw him get loose in the corner. On his corner exit, he was trying to catch up to [the car] and when he hit the fence I thought he was just going to stay up there. But we were coming 30 miles an hour faster and he pulled down right into my race track. I was either going to clobber him in the left rear or go through the grass and it ruined our day.

"It's tough because I really felt like we had a car that could win [Sunday] and we never really got to show our speed."

Despite multiple pit stops during the caution, both drivers were able to stay on the lead lap, with Hamlin restarting 22nd and Johnson restarting 25th when the race went green on Lap 172. However, neither driver would find themselves back in the top 10 for the rest of the evening.

Even though Hamlin didn't hit anything, the infield grass did more than enough damage.

"It killed it," Hamlin said. "When I went through the grass, these things are so low to the ground that it just ripped everything out from underneath the car. It just ended our day. There was nothing we were going to do to make it better."

Johnson's night actually went from bad to worse. On Lap 274, he got loose for a second time, this time in Turn 2, and he crushed the inside wall after a spin causing serious damage to his No. 48 Chevrolet and sending him to the infield care center.

"We were trying to recover from [the first crash] and I was trying to run from the leader, trying to be respectful of the leader, and I had the leader on my tail coming through," Johnson said. "We made some big adjustments to the car and basically adjusted it to free it up and I just spun out off of [Turn] 2."

Remarkably, it took a little more than 30 laps to get Johnson and the No. 48 back on the track for some much-needed points racing.

"The guys did a really good job fixing it," Chad Knaus, crew chief for the No. 48 said. "We pride ourselves on trying to keep prepared and the guys did a fantastic job fixing it. Unfortunately we didn't really gain anything, but we didn't lose any."

Johnson avoided his fourth DNF of the season, but fell three spots in the standings, dropping to seventh after finishing 37th. Despite the fall, Johnson knows there are going to be rough patches during a season and he's ready to put Charlotte behind him and move on to Pocono.

"You race long enough, you're going to have bad stretches," Johnson said. "We've been performing well and running well but we've had some bad luck and made some mistakes. Got in the wall in traffic off of Turn 4 and got loose off of [Turn] 2. I guess I'll take the blame for that but we'll be back next week."

Hamlin joins Johnson in wanting to move on, but this missed opportunity is going to haunt Hamlin for a little while.

"When someone has a problem in front of you, everything happens so fast you don't have time to correct and don't have time to make the right decision all the time," Hamlin said. "It's definitely not the way we wanted to end this stretch but we know we have a bunch of strong tracks ahead of us and hopefully we can get some more wins and rack up on the win column."