Kenseth puts together late rally to get top-10 at AMS (cont'd)

"I've thought about it a lot of times, and when [the free pass rule] first came out, I hated it -- I thought it was the silliest thing in the world, to give somebody a free lap back for no reason," Kenseth said. "But yet again, in a race like this, where there are 25 or 30 cars a lap down, you still gotta race like crazy to get it.

"So I don't know. It definitely makes it more entertaining, puts more people on the lead lap at the end of the race. It works better at some places than others -- like, at Watkins Glen it seems silly -- but here and places where you get a lot of cars a lap down it certainly makes the race more interesting, I think."

It worked that way for Kenseth, who had battled his way to 14th only 43 laps after getting his lap back. And as bad as the Roush Fenway men claimed their car was handling, they were still one of only 11 cars on the lead lap when the race reached Lap 200.

Despite that, there were just more than 100 laps left in the race when Kenseth got into the top 10 for the first time, at Lap 220.

Bolin and Kenseth agreed their car was the best it had been all day at the end of the race when Kenseth -- who won Saturday's Nationwide Series Nicorette 300 but only has a best finish of third in 16 Cup starts here -- outran three-time Atlanta winner Jimmie Johnson, who was going for his third consecutive AMS victory, among others over the last 30 laps.

"Yeah [it was the best], but it still sucked," Kenseth said. "We were just off -- we just missed it somewhere -- I don't know where [because] obviously the 99 [Carl Edwards] and 16 [fourth-place Greg Biffle] hit it pretty good.

"We were just off. We started off real bad and made a lot of improvements, but we just never got it right."

Kenseth's crew, as it often has, stepped up again on his last pit stop, under the eighth caution at Lap 283, as in addition to regular service they had to change the car's throttle spring, which knocked Kenseth back to 11th for the final restart.

"We finally figured out what to do with it at the end, so I guess we probably would've wanted another fuel run, if it was up to us," Bolin said. "But I think I pretty much wore him [Kenseth] out, chasing it [Sunday] so we'll let him go home and just finish eighth.

"Everybody did a good job and we'll go on to the next one."

The finish was Kenseth's 10th top-10 in 16 AMS starts, and despite breaking a string of three consecutive top-fives, had him somewhat upbeat as the series heads to consecutive short-track races at Bristol and Martinsville.

"The end result was great," Kenseth said. "We didn't run good at all and we were able to overcome almost being two laps down to finish eighth. Overall, I'm happy with the result.

"It was really a struggle. We ran really bad and got a good finish, so I'm happy with that."