For Ragan, a gutsy effort comes up 77 points short (cont'd)

"We probably needed to win," Kahne said. "I don't know where Clint was, but we needed to do a little better than that. We gave it our best shot, the team did a great job all day, I drove as hard as I could, and we ended up where we ended up. We'll keep working, we'll keep getting better, and hopefully be even better and more prepared next season."

For Ragan, it was all much closer than the final point spread would indicate. He entered the race 17 points behind Bowyer for the final Chase position, but Fennig made the decision to stay out when Bowyer and Kahne pitted during a caution prompted by a Kyle Busch spin on Lap 242 (watch video). Ragan took advantage of the track position, moving into the 12th spot in the standings and building a 52-point advantage on Bowyer. With 120 laps remaining Ragan seemed in control of his own destiny, running in 14th while Kahne was in 24th and Bowyer toiled in 25th. Ragan had a 73-point lead on Bowyer when A.J. Allmendinger pancaked the wall and brought out the caution that would begin to turn things around.

"Gotta stay out," Fennig said over the radio, and Kahne and Bowyer did the same. Bowyer gradually closed the gap once the race returned to green, cutting the points deficit to one with 93 laps remaining, and passing Ragan in the standings soon afterward. Later he passed him on the racetrack as well, and any hope Ragan had of catching up was doomed when he sustained damage to his left front after contact with Regan Smith (watch video). The car had been beaten up already, taking damage from a collision with Matt Kenseth earlier in the race. In the end it was left with loose ends of black tape dangling off the rear end, and smoking from crinkled sheet metal rubbing a tire.

"The bottom line was Clint was on the bottom and just punted the 01 [car of Smith] and shot the 01 up the track," Ragan said. "I was on his right-rear quarterpanel and ran into him. I thought I might have had Clint about staying where I could have got around the 01 and maybe put a car between us, but he did what he had to do. He just gave the 01 a shot and I happened to be on the outside of him."

It was a deflating end to what was almost an amazing comeback. Ragan's Chase chances seemed finished just 122 laps into the event, when he spun up the track in Turn 2. He slid right into the path of the oncoming Kenseth, and the resulting crash left both cars with damage (watch video). The Roush drivers had been running seventh and eighth, but after the accident plummeted to 31st and 32nd. Ragan made a pit stop to repair the damage, and lost a lap in the process. Kenseth had to pit under green to repair a damaged crush panel, and lost two laps. Suddenly, it seemed both drivers were in jeopardy of finishing NASCAR's regular season on the outside looking in.

"I just got really loose getting into Turn 1 and chased it up the hill, and it looks like Matt was tucked up underneath me, and as I was spinning around, he actually, I think he touched my left-front and kind of straightened me back up, which hurt him, but allowed me to keep on going and not hit so hard," Ragan said. "I haven't seen a replay of it, but I told the guys that maybe we had a tire going down or it seemed like something happened pretty abruptly, that our car hadn't had that characteristic all weekend and had that the rest of the race, so that's something we'll have to diagnose when we get back to the shop."

Nobody gave up. "We've got a lot of laps to go," spotter Tony Hirschman told Ragan over the radio. "We'll get there." And they did, catching a break when a caution brought out by a sliding Juan Montoya gave Ragan a free pass back onto the lead lap. The bandaged-up No. 6 car gave it a gutsy effort from there, with Fennig's pit strategy translating into better track position. It all put a real scare into Bowyer, who seemed vulnerable until Ragan began fading late in the race. There was never any talk over team radio about where the No. 07 car was running -- it was all strategy and the status of the car.

"I never heard anything on the radio all day about where the guys were running," Ragan said. "Basically, we had our hands full trying to make adjustments on the car and making sure the fenders weren't rubbing, listening to where the leaders were and trying not to go a lap down, so we had our hands full today. The bottom line is, I was driving as hard as I could to get the next spot or the next position. You never know what may be around the next corner, so, no, I never heard anything throughout the day from Jimmy or the spotter on where everybody else was running, but, obviously, when they're in front of you, you can look at them and see where they're at."

Ragan was the first to admit, his team probably hasn't been championship-caliber for much of this season. But his strong regular-season stretch run -- five top-10s in seven events entering Richmond -- provided something of a breakthrough for a 22-year-old driver who's endured his share of growing pains on the Sprint Cup level.

"Regardless of how we ended up [Sunday], I told everyone before the race that whether we made the Chase or not wasn't gonna solely be on the Richmond race," Ragan said. "I can look back at three or four races earlier in the year we didn't do a good job that resulted in the loss of a few points and also some races we had run good and everything was fine. So certainly everything is easier the second time around. Our speed has been in the racecar, it's just a matter of making good decisions on Saturday or Sunday. We've still got 10 more races to go. It certainly would be a disappointment if this was Homestead and this was it, but we've still got 10 more races to go to try to finish 13th in points, try to get a win out of the year, and get some more top-fives and get ready for next year."