Long faces, but no short hopes in No. 48 garage (cont'd)

Knaus agreed on that point.

"A couple of cars had slapped the wall and there probably was some debris out there," the crew chief said. "But there's really no telling what caused it. Unfortunately the rubber is the softest thing on that racecar, and if we ran something over, there's nothing you can do about it."

Gordon was in the top spot after 106 laps, when the race was called because of rain; which brought out the race's fourth and final caution, at Lap 105.

Despite the misfortune, Johnson fell only from second to fourth in the driver standings, albeit 305 points behind Gordon.

He was more concerned about the drop than Knaus, who spent some long moments after the race was called, sitting on his trailer's side stairway, slowly dragging on a cigarette.

"I'm always thinking about the points," Johnson said earlier, right after the rain delay began. "Sitting here today, it doesn't seem so bad, but if you string a couple of bad races together, it can get you into trouble."

Knaus was more nonplussed by the drop.

"It's not bad at all," he said. "When we get to the cutoff, it will be a moot point, and with the way the system is now, we'll have a 40-point edge over the people who haven't won."

Both Gordon and Johnson have won four times -- which gives them a 40-point bonus when the standings are reset after race 26 in September. No one else has more than one victory at this point in the season.