Notes: Elliott has hard time with commitment in return (cont'd)

"If we didn't have an opportunity to win it, I would have said sixth place and leading so many laps was awesome," Zipadelli said. "It just seems like things have been stacked against us this season. There are probably four or five races that we could have won, and things just didn't go our way."

School of hard knocks

He entered the Coca-Cola 600 as the points leader in the Nextel Cup driver standings, and was looking forward to a long night of running on Lowe's Motor Speedway, one of his favorite race tracks.

And when Jeff Gordon surged from a starting position of 32nd to fifth in the first 60 laps of the 400-lap marathon, he was starting to think it might be another special night. Then Tony Raines, driver of the No. 96 Chevrolet, spun in front of Gordon's No. 24 Chevy and there was nowhere for Gordon to go.

He plowed into Raines and spun, slapped the outside wall, then took a hard hit from A.J. Allmendinger in his passenger's side door and went airborne briefly in what some veteran observers speculated was perhaps the hardest hit Gordon has taken in his 16-year career as a Cup driver. He later disputed that, crediting the improved safety equipment in his car and the softer safety walls that are now installed at LMS.

"I think it looked worse than it really was. I was gearing up for it to be a really hard hit, but it wasn't as severe as I thought," Gordon said. "With all the safety things that we have [like] the soft wall, I was very, very pleased with the impact and how it absorbed. It looked nastier than it really was when the No. 84 [of Allmendinger] was right there because it sent the car airborne. But I'm fine."

Gordon lamented the early finish to his day, which relegated him to a 41st-place finish -- by far his worst of the season. In fact, prior to his early exit Sunday, Gordon had completed every lap of every race of the 2007 Nextel Cup season, covering the first 11 races and the first 60 laps Sunday.

"I was falling in love again out there [Sunday]. I tell you what, when the car is driving like that and you drive from 32nd to the top five the way we did, I was liking it," Gordon said. "We have been having so many things go our way; I hate this because of the points. But as good as this race team is, we will fight our way back and get back up there and have some more good runs. Hopefully we come back here in the fall and win it. We know we are capable of it."

Despite the poor finish, Gordon still leads the points parade. He remains 132 points ahead of teammate Jimmie Johnson, who finished 10th Sunday and remains second in points.