Jimmie Johnson has won the Coca-Cola 600 four times in his NASCAR Cup Series career. He was just .293 seconds away from a fifth victory, one that would have ended an 102 race winless streak too. Or was he?

Johnson, thought he was awarded with a second place finish, instead, his car failed post race inspection. He was credited with a last place (40th) result now. Jay Fabian, NASCAR’s director of competition, says that his car failed in the rear alignment numbers in the OSS. He said that NASCAR gives a pretty decent tolerance for postrace numbers and this was well outside of that.

Johnson thought that he earned his third runner-up finish at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. He said post race before finding out about the penalty that he was  happy to come home runner-up though, which also would have earned him his 17th career top five on the 1.5-mile track and 28th top 10, including four straight and six in his last seven to go along with four top eight finishes already this season.

“I’m very proud of my team,” Johnson continued. Very proud of everybody. Second’s okay. Proud of the effort everyone is giving. Second stinks too. It’s tough to be this close to victory lane but we’re getting there.”

The California native qualified second too, narrowly missing out on the pole too by a slim margin of .009-seconds. It was a day of close calls for him, as a tenth of a second in both areas would have netted him a win from the pole before post race tech.