Not what he wanted, but Bowyer will take seventh (cont'd)

Near the mid-point of the race, Bowyer was on an 18-lap stint in the lead when all of a sudden his car shut off. By the time he figured out what had occurred, he had fallen to 19th on the racetrack.

"We were out in the lead and the ignition box, of all things, just cut out," Bowyer said, struggling to find a highway comparison.

Lap-by-Lap

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"Well, throwing up is what I wanted to do," Bowyer said before unleashing an enormous laugh. "I didn't know what happened -- it's like there's no way [to compare]. I guess being in California traffic nose-to-tail at 80 mph and your car quits and you're in the middle lane. It took me a while to figure out what happened. We hit the other ignition box and it took off again. That was kind of a bummer -- it got us set back."

His low point of the race, 24th, came 30 laps later on a pit cycle, but he kept digging and got back to the lead on Lap 142.

"I never thought in a million years we'd get back up there," Bowyer said. "We were so tight in traffic. We got a couple good pushes and I got up through them again. We get back in the lead and I'm thinking, 'Man, we might have them after all.'"

But two restarts in the last 18 laps were Bowyer's undoing. On the penultimate restart with 13 laps remaining, four Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets, plus a couple Roush Fenway Racing Fords, were lined up behind him.

"That was pretty sickening," Bowyer said of the sight. "We just got too far behind -- had too many teammates behind us, teamed up on us there at the end and they just went around me."

Three laps after the restart, with 10 to go, Bowyer was third, running on the low line and in the middle of an absolute hornet's nest.

"It was very dicey," Bowyer said. "Everybody was going for broke and it always ends up that way. You ride around here to get to the last five laps. You can't push it that hard the whole race, but everybody does stuff to get their cars to run a little bit better. But those last five laps, hey -- the only way you're going to win the race is just go for it.

"We had a shot; we just had too many teammates running behind us. We about got there. But it was a good effort, a good day for us."