FORT WORTH, Texas -- Can you believe Jeff Gordon is looking forward to the Car of Tomorrow on a 1.5-mile speedway?

Believe it.

"It was impossible to pass here, today," Gordon said. "I'm looking forward to seeing what this Car of Tomorrow does here, because the aero push was just horrible today -- the worst I've ever seen it."

Samsung 500 runner-up Matt Kenseth could only laugh when told of the statement, which Hendrick Motorsports' driver Gordon made on pit road at Texas Motor Speedway after battling a viciously pushing car to a fading fourth place.

"That's funny," said Kenseth, who was carrying his own share of disgust after being passed by Jeff Burton on the last lap to miss a chance to score twin weekend victories at Texas.

"But the only reason I was laughing during your question is, I was riding around in the truck with Gordon [during pre-race ceremonies] and he was telling me how much he hated the Car of Tomorrow, and everybody was listening to him and we were joking about it."

Gordon was ready for a switch even before he flat-sided his multi-hued Chevy in two separate smacks against TMS's unforgiving concrete. The final blow precipitated his fall from first to fourth over the race's final 17 laps.

"The problem was because I hit the wall," Gordon said. "It was a stupid mistake. We were awesome out front until I hit the wall, but behind cars it felt like it was not even the same racecar.

"I just came off of Turn 4, leading the race and just out of nowhere it took off, pushing on me. I certainly have to look at that and see if there's something I can do different next time. But it definitely pushed the right front fender in and then we were done from that point on."

Gordon couldn't even take any consolation from being in good company. His first encounter with the wall came earlier when he was hotly pursuing leader Kurt Busch's No. 2 Penske Racing Dodge.

"I got into the wall earlier, behind the 2 car," Gordon said of the inappropriate game of follow-the-leader -- literally. "He kind of brushed it and I went in after him. It was kind of a weird thing."

It was even weirder watching first Kenseth, and then Burton blow past the previously dominant Gordon.

The last man to pass Gordon was Mark Martin, who returned at Texas from a planned, two-race hiatus from the sport. From Gordon's perspective, Martin's triumphant return, which marked his fifth consecutive top-10 finish, definitely had its ups and downs.

"I had fun racing with him earlier," Gordon said through a wry grin. "But there wasn't much racing with him right there [at the end] because the fender was bent in.

"I wasn't racing anybody. I was just trying to hold on to as much as I possibly could. I'm just glad that we could finish in the top five."

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."