Notes: Top-five can't pull Hamlin from 12th in Chase (cont'd)

Montoya rookie of the year
Juan Montoya didn't win on an oval as he wanted to in his rookie season but he took top rookie honors and a strong season-ending 15th-place finish at Homestead.

The Colombia native was the highest-finishing rookie of the race and took home the 2007 Raybestos Rookie of the Year award.

"I think we learned a lot," Montoya said of his first season in the Cup Series. "We can qualify well and have good runs but it's hard. I think we came out pretty good. I think more important we had a race win [Sonoma]. I think for the record books it will look pretty good that I won the Raybestos Rookie of the Year."

Record breaker
Jeff Gordon didn't pull off the "drive for five" but he did set a new record for most top-10 finishes in a single season with 30 in all.

The state of Team Red Bull
Typically after a Cup race, NASCAR teams and public relations reps issue a report to describe their performance on the track and thoughts to the future.

In Sunday's Cup race, the No. 84 of A.J. Allmendinger did not qualify for the race and the No. 83 of Brian Vickers finished 42nd after a crash involving Johnny Sauter and Patrick Carpentier on Lap 157.

Instead of a post-race report, team officials issued a top-10 list of what they were going to do during the offseason:

1. Make a mess in our own homes instead of the hotel (then regret it when there's no cleaning service to make the mess disappear).

2. Turn off our BlackBerry (a.k.a. "crackberry") for at least one day -- just to see what it's like.

3. Leave our "Gives You Wings" pants in the dirty laundry just because we can.

4. Spend Sunday afternoons watching football instead of NASCAR.

5. Use the same bath towel several days in a row instead of getting a fresh one hung daily on the towel rack.

6. Use headphones for iPod's -- not race scanners.

7. Avoid restaurants that require their servers to wear 10 pieces of "flair."

8. Not respond to a sentence with "10-4" until we step foot at Daytona.

9. Only use golf carts for transportation when we're actually golfing.

10. Put miles on our personal cars instead of rental cars and racecars.