Earnhardt blows engine, damages Chase hopes (cont'd)

"But this one here and Texas -- I mean, it's a team -- but both of them were driver-related. At Texas, when we got in the wreck when Kyle Busch hit us, it was over-revved and all the valves hit the pistons, and when we went back out, we broke a valve.

"So the car was demolished, but at the end of the day it had a blown engine."

Not only did Earnhardt lose ground to Busch, he fell four points behind Busch's Penske Racing teammate, Ryan Newman, who survived several incidents to finish 13th. Busch was hit with a pit road speeding penalty under a debris caution that flew right after Earnhardt's engine failed. Busch got knocked back into the pack as a result of having to restart at the end of the line, but finished 11th.

"It was a good day," Busch said. "We worked our way up all the way to second at one point. We tried to be conservative on fuel and that put us in the back of the pack -- all those yellows at the end made it too tough to pass.

"[But] it was good for the points. That finish bumped us up just a little bit -- [and] every little bit counts."

In the end, the outcome was a disappointing one to a day it seemed Earnhardt's team had saved.

After declaring after practice that his team would have to improve to contend in the race, Earnhardt's team had done just that through the first two-thirds of the Centurion Boats at The Glen.

He started 14th when the lineup was determined by owner points but marched halfway to the lead in the first 10 laps. From that seventh position, he advanced to second by lap 50 and was fourth on lap 60.

But on the 64th lap, Earnhardt's car faltered and then coasted a while before he pulled off on the backstretch.

"I am real proud of my team -- we were terrible all weekend but that car was good during the race -- it was fun to drive," Earnhardt said. "I thought we were putting on a show, we were working really hard and had something to be proud of -- now all kind of disappointed, but we will come back next week."

Gilmore said little will change in the team's focus.

"We have to go back to the shop and look at what happened and evaluate that," Gilmore said. "But you can't get conservative because the people you are beating are top-notch organizations.

"So we'll have to go back and look at what happened, evaluate it and make changes as we need to."