LOUDON, N.H. -- Nothing short of a victory would ease the pain of any NASCAR competitor that didn't make the Chase for the Sprint Cup, but Kurt Busch and Martin Truex Jr. were feeling OK Sunday evening at New Hampshire Motor Speedway after contending for good parts of the day and posting top-10 finishes in the Sylvania 300.

Busch was in the top five for nearly half of the 300-lap race and ended up sixth, his third top 10 in the last six races. Busch said his team was hoping to maintain the momentum it began last weekend at Richmond, when he finished 10th.

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We're still struggling at the end of the race keeping up with the racetrack. I don't think it's anybody's fault. We just have to work on something different, but [with] what we've been having lately, it felt good the last two weeks.

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-- KURT BUSCH

"This is the kind of run that we would chalk up to last week's experience because for the weeks before we were just trying stuff out of the box, trying to find something that would help our car," said Busch, whose Penske Racing team has struggled a lot this season with NASCAR's new car. "We still struggled towards the end to get the front end to turn, and that's our big concern.

"We're still struggling at the end of the race keeping up with the racetrack. I don't think it's anybody's fault. We just have to work on something different, but [with] what we've been having lately, it felt good the last two weeks."

Truex made his first Chase last season but like Busch could not get back into contention for this year's playoffs, despite good flashes of his former performance. Sunday, he ran in the top 10 for more than the last half of the race before circumstances knocked him into seventh.

His crew chief Kevin Manion just laughed when a bystander suggested that Truex's top finish was the result of "Modified karma" achieved Saturday when Ryan Newman started Manion's Tom Baldwin Tribute car on the pole for the Whelen Modified Tour's feature event and ran with the leaders all day before being eliminated in a late wreck while running in the top five.

"We had a bad-ass racecar today," Manion said. "It was absolutely a great day to build momentum for these last 10, getting ready for 2009. That late caution there kind of goofed us up a little bit because I thought we had a shot at a top five.

"We were pretty much by Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. and we were chasing down [Jeff Burton], so the cautions just didn't help us. But we had a top-five car for sure, today because we started way back in 17th and worked our way up to the front."

Burton and Earnhardt ended up finishing fourth and fifth; but the fact that he lost ground at the end hardly fazed Truex, who scored his first top-10 in five races.

"That was a great run for [our] guys," Truex said. "We had a great car and if the race would have stayed green, I feel like we would have easily been top five. It wasn't that great on restarts, but after 10 laps or so it started to come to me; but, we'll take seventh.

"The main thing for us is that it's great to be competitive again."

Busch hoped his two-race string carried over to the upcoming track, saying even though the majority of the Chase races are on high-speed intermediate racetracks, the philosophical direction they're exploring might pay dividends, and his crew chief Pat Tryson agreed.

"Overall, the concept that we put in the car for the last two weeks, we need to work on that for the other tracks in the next couple weeks to continue this baseline," Busch said. "So we'll see where that takes us."

"We've been working pretty hard and have come up with some things that I think have been helping us," Tryson said. "It looks like right now we've got our short track program going a little bit so now we've just got to go to work on our big track program -- keep working hard and keep digging and hopefully we can catch up with those other guys."

Busch started the season with a second place finish behind Penske teammate Newman, but he spiraled out of Chase contention with a rough seven-race run shortly after that and never recovered; so Tryson said the last two good finishes were positives.

"It's big," Tryson said of momentum building, "because if we can just come into next year with a positive attitude [because] most of this year, obviously, we haven't had happy times. So to go into next year with a positive attitude would be really good and hopefully we've got some new stuff coming along and some new generation cars and hopefully they're better yet and we can start beating some of these guys."

Manion agreed with Tryson when it came to the subject of momentum, after his team moved up two spots in the official standings, to 15th while Busch advanced one spot, to 18th.

If there were an unofficial "Chased-Out" standings for the teams that didn't qualify for the 12-man championship playoffs, Busch has a four-point lead over Truex. Manion said he liked the concept.

"We've just gotta make this our own Chase, and see where would we finish up," Manion said. "Not that it matters, but it's self-gratifying to the whole team [to run and finish strong]. This was a brand-new car and it ran good today and we're making improvements to the team and getting ready for '09."