RICHMOND, Va. -- Maybe, just maybe, driver Dave Blaney's strong run in Sunday's Nextel Cup Series race at Richmond International Raceway was a beacon of light at the end of the dark tunnel that has been the season for Toyota's inaugural Cup teams.

It ended up not even being the best finish for a Toyota this season. But Blaney was running in the top five late in the race when, with 29 laps to go, Sterling Marlin got into Ward Burton from behind -- starting a chain reaction that could have ended Blaney's day much more miserably.

Running outside near the wall as he, Ricky Rudd and Burton tried to race three-wide, Blaney somehow came out of the incident relatively unscathed. He did fall back to 18th as a result, before battling his way back to an 11th-place finish.

It was by far his best finish of the season. His previous best was a 21st-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway.

"We were doing fine," Blaney said. "We kind of backed up one time and were about 15th; then we took two tires and got track position. We were kind of hanging on -- struggling a bit, but hanging on.

"I don't know [what happened in the incident]. We just got together with somebody. I went way up the track. I slid the front tires under the brakes and went way up the track. Then they got underneath me. I was giving them a hole by sliding up the track so I don't really know what happened after that."

What happened, according to Blaney's crew chief, Kevin Hamlin, was that Blaney's No. 22 Toyota got a little lucky.

"It could have been a big pile of [junk] on the front straightaway," said Hamlin, laughing.

Fact is, for once Blaney's car wasn't junk most of race day. Hamlin said it responded well to adjustments that were made during pit stops.

"We had a pretty decent racecar all day," Hamlin said. "At one point in the race, we got to where it wouldn't roll through the center very good. It was too tight and it still didn't have as good a drive-off [power] as it needed, and that's where we fell behind.

"When we got into that position, where we were back there with the last four or five cars on the lead lap, we tried to put ourselves in a position where when we got a caution around Lap 319 or whatever, we could make some adjustments and get out of that spot where we were scrapping with those four of five cars." (Continued)