Gordon won Sunday's Samsung 500 in his 17th Cup race at Texas and picked up his first victory in a points-paying race since October 2007 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte.

The four-time series champion led the most laps with 105, but had to hold off a late-race challenge from his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson to record his 82nd career victory. He is one win away from tying Cale Yarborough for fifth on the all-time race winners list.

"It feels like the very first time I've ever won," Gordon said. "It's been a long streak. It's been a lot of ups and downs and tough times, not only here at Texas, but just over the past. They keep reminding me...I think it was 47 races ago, and I knew we were going to get one eventually."

Prior to his victory, Gordon had finished twice at Texas, most recently in November. His only two last-place finishes in his Cup career have also come at the one-and-a-half mile track. He finished 43rd here one year ago.

Homestead-Miami Speedway is now the only active track where Gordon has not won a Cup race. Homestead has been on the schedule since 1999.

"Every season you're looking for that first win," he said. "And you get that one off your back and you can breathe and relax. We've been doing that 47 races now. And so this is a huge relief, but also very exciting. And I think that this team has already shown how strong they are with their consistency and the battles that we've had already, especially on the mile-and-a-half tracks. And if we can win at Texas, I feel like we can win anywhere.

Johnson, who won last weekend's race at Martinsville, struggled with an ill- handling car in the first-half of the race and fell back as far as 18th.

"I'm just very proud of the composure we kept today to fight through the ill handling car at the start," Johnson said. "We just didn't have it right for some reason."

After making adjustments during a round of pit stops, the three-time defending Sprint Cup champion cruised through the field and rallied for a second-place finish, giving Hendrick a one-two finish at Texas.

"We had to get to work with tire pressure, wedge and track bar," he said. "We put stuff in, out, tried different combinations of those against one another. Finally at the end, we got it close. I was able to start working my way up through traffic."

It's the ninth time Gordon and Johnson have finished one-two in a Cup race.

Greg Biffle finished third, despite a pit-road blunder late in the race.

"We probably made some wrong decisions, whether to take two tires or four tires in that one stop," Biffle said. "We lost just a little bit of track position on that. We were able to gain some of it back. Then, unfortunately, we had some lug nuts fall off or something on a pit stop. We lost a lot of track position."

Tony Stewart and Matt Kenseth rounded out the top-five.

Mark Martin, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kurt Busch, Jeff Burton and Carl Edwards were sixth through 10, respectively.

Edwards, who was attempting to win his third consecutive race at Texas and fourth overall here, held the lead in the late-stages, but David Stremme spun and hit the wall on lap 302, setting up the final round of pit stops. Gordon captured the lead for the final time, while Edwards came out 11th after his crew had problems changing his tires.

Kyle Busch, winner of Saturday's Nationwide race, had a tough day at Texas. Busch made contact with John Andretti and cut his left-front tire on lap 109. He had to make an unexpected pit stop for new tires and fell one lap behind. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver was also penalized for speeding on pit road during another stop. He ended up finishing 18th.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s mistakes on pit road continued this season. Earnhardt Jr. had to pit again for a loose lugnut, but overshot his stall when he came in, which put him even further back in the field. He later grabbed the lead when he took fuel only during a caution. But Junior quickly gave up the top spot after nearly making contact with the lapped car of Kyle Busch. Junior scraped the wall shortly after, which caused slight damage to his car and resulted in a 20th-place finish.

David Reutimann started on the pole and ran among the leaders for a better part of the race. But Reutimann pitted outside of his box and lost a lap as a result. He fell way back in the field. Reutimann did recover slightly with an 11th-place run.

The only major incident occurred on lap 230 when Sam Hornish Jr. went sideways in turn two after running side-by-side with Clint Bowyer. Bobby Labonte veered to the right to avoid the Hornish's spinning car, but made contact with the wall. Labonte suffered heavy damage to his car and finished 40th.

With the victory, Gordon increased his lead to a season-high 162 points over new second-place Johnson, who moved up two positions in the standings.

The series takes next week off and then heads to Phoenix International Raceway for the first Saturday night race of the season, the Subway Fresh Fit 500, on April 18.