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Mon, Mar 19, 2007By Associated Press

FRUSTRATED JUNIOR: Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran in the top 10 part of the day but wound up fading to 14th at the finish.

That moved the popular driver up from 28th to 26th in the points, but it didn't make him very happy, especially with crew chief Tony Eury Jr. and the rest of his crew.

''We ran pretty good all day until the end,'' he said. ''There at the end, I don't know what the hell Tony Jr. and those guys did to the car, but it was terrible.

''I am not complaining but pretty frustrated that we didn't do a better job of getting our car handling. With a hundred (laps) to go, we got bad. This team is better than what we ran today.''


GORDON'S RUN: Another driver who had the right to be frustrated Sunday was Jeff Gordon, who ran with the leaders most of the day and led 30 laps before a couple of problems in the pits relegated him to a 12th-place finish.

First, after coming in while leading, his crew had trouble getting a tire on during a pit stop on lap 193 of the 325-lap event. He later got caught speeding on pit road, forcing him to restart from the rear of the field and costing him a lap. And, finally, his crew had to hurriedly replace a loose crush panel that was allowing carbon monoxide from the exhaust to seep into the No. 24's cockpit.

''I'm very disappointed, obviously,'' said the four-time champion who had his string of consecutive top 10 finishes ended at three. ''We had a crush panel come loose and we're getting to the bottom of that, and we made little mistakes where we got a lap down in the pits. That shouldn't have ever happened.

''I think we had a shot at winning, but it doesn't matter. We came out of here 12th, got the best finish we could. We're still second in the points so, in some ways, we were fortunate.''

SPARK PLUGS: Brian Vickers wound up 42nd after getting caught up in a four-car crash on lap 230, but he did lead five laps, the first laps led by one of the new Toyotas. ... The new manufacturer's teams continued to struggled with Dave Blaney 27th, the highest finishing of four Camrys in the race. ... Defending race champion Kasey Kahne, off to a terrible start in 2007, continued to struggle with a 39th-place finish.