Gordon not happy with aerodynamics at Texas (cont'd)

And after Gordon scuffed his car's right side from stem to stern, faded from the lead that he held for 173 of the race's 334 laps and squandered a chance to win at one of the three tracks on the Nextel Cup schedule at which he's never won a Cup race, he was ready to try anything.

"The Car of Tomorrow, I think, has some indications that it could be better, could be worse," Gordon said. "So I don't know, but a track like this is the real indication."

Gordon was one of only two drivers who were scored in the top five at every increment in the race, along with Burton. Gordon also led at least a lap for the sixth consecutive race, bumping his season total to 414 laps led.

In the end, those were stats that did him no good.

And he didn't want to hear about it after he emerged from his car and walked around it, eyeing the nose and particularly the ruined right front fender and deformed sheet metal behind it.

He quietly spoke and laughed with his crew for several minutes before returning to the car's left side to meet the media.

"It was just real tight," Gordon said. "I got off of [Turn 4], under throttle and there was just nothing I could do -- it sucked right into the wall. That just killed the right front fender and pretty much ruined our day."

Gordon maintaining his lead in the Nextel Cup standings, albeit by a scant, eight-point margin over Burton, was little consolation for the third consecutive victory that had frittered through his fingers.

"We were just going along and everything felt good [because] we've got such an awesome crew right now and I'm so excited about it," Gordon said. "To have an opportunity to win here felt good but I feel that I gave one away [from] these guys who really deserve it."

Gordon's finish was his third consecutive top five, following a third at Bristol and second at Martinsville; and he racked up his sixth top 10 in seven races this season.

But it came with a price of battling handling variances all day.

"We had freed it up [before hitting the wall] because it was going to get pretty tight towards the end [of the race] and it was gonna be tough, maybe, to hold off Matt and Jeff," Gordon said. "But no, it wasn't the worst it had been and I was feeling pretty good about it at that point."

In the end, Gordon and Kenseth, operating in totally different forums as Gordon made his statements on pit road while Kenseth made his in his second place media briefing, had an impromptu debate about passing and "pushing" particularly in the case of Burton's last lap, winning move.

"It just depends on where his car was working best," Gordon said. "Matt wasn't that good -- I'll be real honest. He was good for a few laps and I was impressed that he held Burton off for as long as he did."

Kenseth obviously agreed with Gordon's assessment of his No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford, but said he felt aero push was not going away any time soon; and Martin, who shared the stage with him, also shared that opinion.

"Matt's driven it a lot more than me, to this point," Martin said. "But my experience is that [aero push] is really bad with the COT, as well."

"This track, you've always had aero-push if you're going to follow someone through the corner because it's so fast and it's flat off the corner," Kenseth said. "If you have an aero-push at this track you can move up and find another lane and make it work. We've seen that. We've seen it yesterday, we've seen it at the end of this race -- there were two very distinctly different lines.

"I wasn't right on Jeff's [Burton] door, I was three car-lengths higher than he was and we were running about the same speed. So if you're not behind a car, if you build racetracks like this, where you don't have to be right behind the car in the same line, you're not going to have an aero-push.

"If you're right behind a guy going this fast, I don't care what kind of car you have, you're still going to have an aero-push."