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."

That worked and Blaney drove up near the front before getting into the scrap with Marlin, Burton and Rudd.

"Our car actually responded fairly well; almost better than the other [regular] car," Hamlin said of Blaney's Car of Tomorrow.

Lap-by-Lap

Jimmie Johnson passed Kyle Busch on a restart on Lap 382 to win the Crown Royal 400 at Richmond Int'l Raceway.

• Complete story, click here

Blaney has been able to go fast at times this season whether running the COT or the regular car, just not at the times that count the most. He has qualified strong in several events -- starting 14th at Fontana, 11th in Las Vegas, seventh at Bristol and 11th at Phoenix.

But the strong qualifying runs hadn't translated into strong finishes. He finished 39th at Fontana, 42nd in Vegas, 23rd at Bristol and 39th in Phoenix.

And when Blaney failed to make a race for the first time at Talladega, the pressure was on for him to finally put together a decent showing in Richmond.

He qualified 10th, and was running as high as fifth before falling back because of the incident. But what may have been most impressive about his day was the way he fought back down the stretch under pressure to at least claw his way back to 11th.

"We came back at least at the end," he said. "We just ran out of time. We had new tires with 20 to go and everybody else probably had 60 or 70 [laps] on theirs. So we should have went for it pretty good right there; in fact, we should have gone further. At least we finished one -- we've had some trouble doing that."

Alas, the strong finish wasn't enough to pull Blaney back into the top 35 in driver points. He moved up one spot to 37th, but will still have to qualify on speed to get into next weekend's race at Darlington.

"We got a good qualifying run and stayed up front most of the day," Hamlin said. "Then we sort of had to come up with a new plan. We were probably going to finish sixth or seventh without getting into that deal at the end; but we drove our way back up there to 11th, so we can't be too dissatisfied with this, the way this year has gone for us."