Combustion-phasing retard is one of the methods to operate at high load without knocking in HCCI engines. However, too much combustion-phasing retard leads to unacceptable cycle-to-cycle variations of IMEP and PRR. Unfortunately, exact combustion-phasing limits and the behavior of the combustion for retarded operations are not well known. This study investigates the combustion behavior for retarded operations when in-cylinder charge at IVC is replaced with EGR. The results show that there are correlations between CA50 and in-cylinder mass averaged gas temperature at IVC. Then, closed-loop feedback combustion control is applied to the HCCI engine for the combustion control at the limit of combustion-phasing without cycle-to-cycle variations of IMEP and PRR.