Notes: Elliott has hard time with commitment in return

CONCORD, N.C. -- Bill Elliott drove the No. 21 Ford Fusion sponsored by the Air Force, and was hanging around on the lead lap when he got caught up in a three-car wreck involving Roush-Fenway Racing teammates Carl Edwards and David Ragan on Lap 220.

Elliott, a former Cup champion who was driving for the first time since the final race of last season at Homestead, blamed himself. Edwards, who was running third at the time and had a strong car, had slowed after having a tire go down and Elliott said he misjudged the best way to get by him and Ragan after Ragan rammed into Edwards.

Lap-by-Lap

Casey Mears used fuel to his advantage and stayed out while others came in to pit. The move worked as Mears holds on to win the Coca-Cola 600.

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"They came down and I shouldn't have hit him," Elliott admitted. "I just shouldn't have hit him. I just committed too late to go down. I tried to wait too long. ... I just kind of already committed to come down and I couldn't get my foot off the brake."

Elliott was credited with a 38th-place finish as a result.

Tough way to treat a teammate

Edwards appeared to be limping toward the pits uneventfully when he suddenly lost control of his No. 99 Ford and spun up the track, giving Ragan nowhere to go. But Ragan still thought he should have been able to get by his Roush-Fenway teammate, which would have spared both of them a great deal of pain.

"My spotter was doing a great job. He told me the 99 was having a problem and, of course, I could see that," Ragan said. "I really hated to get into Carl. I just thought he would come up the track a lot faster. ... I thought I could squeeze through the middle. I was just trying not to wreck myself and turned it down the hill and -- guess what? -- I wrecked myself."

Running on empty

Tony Stewart was leading Sunday's race when he pitted for a splash of fuel with nine laps to go, following Jimmie Johnson and Mark Martin into the pits.

While others stayed out and gambled on fuel mileage, which enabled Casey Mears to win the race and J.J. Yeley, Kyle Petty, Reed Sorenson and Brian Vickers to round out the top five, Stewart's crew chief, Greg Zipadelli, said he had no choice but to call Stewart into the pits at the time.

"It was frustrating, because I felt like we had more to lose than we did to gain by staying out," Zipadelli said. "If we didn't make it and we ran out [of gas] with two to go, we would have ended up 18th or something. That wouldn't have been very good."

Stewart ended up finishing sixth -- a bitter pill to swallow after leading a total of 76 laps.

"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.