LOUDON, N.H. -- Kyle Busch took off his helmet, climbed out of his crumpled and bandaged racecar, and walked down the long corridor between team transporters without saying a word. Then he vanished, just like his lead in the Sprint Cup standings.

All those race wins. All those bonus points. All that work the first seven months of the season to cement himself as the championship favorite and the top seed in the Chase. All of it gone after a sudden and startling series of events Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. A broken mechanical piece, a pit road penalty, a spin, a crash -- when it was all over Busch found himself with a 34th-place finish, and out of the Sprint Cup points lead for the first time in 18 weeks. In one overcast afternoon he went from 30 points in front to 74 points behind, a plummet that left him so steamed he evaded the media, jumped into a golf cart, and was spirited away without comment.

"You can imagine," team owner Joe Gibbs said, when asked about Busch's level of disappointment. "He's raced all year to get here. We haven't had failure problems, really. That one really hurt. But sometimes in racing, that can happen to us. He was really down. It was one of those things too, I know what kind of a competitor he is, and you've got to come roaring back and find a way to make it."

Still, it may take some time to get over the sting of Sunday, which left Busch -- who hadn't been lower than fifth in points all season -- in eighth place. The usually reliable No. 18 car was left fishtailing and scraping the wall only 19 laps into the event, the result of a broken heim joint, which connects the vehicle's left side sway bar to the lower control arm. With the piece unhooked, the yellow Camry was a rolling wreck (watch video). In the garage after the race, the Joe Gibbs Racing brain trust of Gibbs, team president J.D. Gibbs, vice president Jimmy Makar, car chief Wesley Sherrill and crew chief Steve Addington all stood in a circle examining the small metal piece that had turned the day so disastrous.

"As soon as the race was over with, we went out and tried to find the part that we had the problem with, and we found it," Addington said. "We'll take it back and analyze it and see what we can do to make a better piece, and make it more bulletproof than what we had. We've run it for a long time, and it broke today. It sucks that it was today, at the beginning of the Chase."

Joe Gibbs said he couldn't recall a similar failure in the 17-year history of his organization. "I think you've got to say, hey, look, it's something that happened and got taken away from us," Gibbs said, "and there was nothing we could do about it."

Its failure led to one problem after another. The No. 18 car was so loose, Addington urged Busch to just try and hang on until a NASCAR-issued competition caution on Lap 35. By the time it arrived, Busch had fallen from first -- he started on the pole because qualifying had been rained out and the field set on points -- to 26th. Pit road was closed, but Addington told his driver to come in anyway. They'd incur a back-of-the-line penalty, but they were headed there regardless. Trying to stay on the lead lap, Addington sent Busch back out before the field passed him, with orders to come back in the next time around. But then, on Lap 37, NASCAR determined that Busch had "pulled out to pit" -- passed cars under yellow to reach pit road. The penalty: one lap.

Busch went ballistic over the radio, cutting loose a torrid stream of profanities despite Addington's best efforts to calm him down. The infraction is plainly spelled out in Section 9-15-A of NASCAR's rule book: "When following the caution vehicle during a caution period," the manual states, "drivers much maintain their position in relation to other cars in the field or as otherwise directed by NASCAR Officials, and will not be permitted to pass other competitors or the caution vehicle when preparing to enter pit road."

Now they were in real trouble, saddled with not only a parts problem but a one-lap penalty on a racetrack famous for long green-flag runs. Busch restarted in 43rd, a lap behind the leader, and already knocked down to 10th in series points. His needed a caution to receive the free pass and get back on the lead lap, but the next 44 circuits were all green. Soon leader Jimmie Johnson went by to put him two laps down. And then a car that had been threatening to break loose all day finally did, spinning on Lap 83 and taking a shot in the left rear by the sliding vehicle of Jamie McMurray (watch video).

"We'd have probably been all right if the 26 [of McMurray] hadn't hit us," Addington said. "We'd have got it fixed and lost a lap or so. That didn't happen."

Instead they came to pit road twice for repairs, the second stop an extended one that left Busch eight laps down and with tape covering his car's mangled left rear. He caught a break later in the race, when a five-car accident -- involving another Chase participant, Matt Kenseth -- allowed him to make up a few more spots (watch video). But now he has some work to do to avoid becoming the fourth regular-season leader to fail to win the championship in the playoff system's five-year history. Tony Stewart in 2005 is the lone exception.

"That's what everybody in this Chase is going to try to avoid -- having a simple problem like that," Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. "Matt had his problem, too. And they're not out of it by a long shot. They're still going to be there each and every week. That's a hole you don't need to be digging yourself into."

With nine races remaining, how substantial is Busch's 74-point deficit?

"I don't think it's a big deficit, because he was 80 ahead [of me] coming in," race winner Greg Biffle said. "That could be made up fairly quickly. When you reset the points, a points shift can come so easily. You'll see those swings like we have at the beginning of the season. He's certainly not out of it -- as long as he doesn't self-destruct."

He certainly exploded a few times Sunday, at least over the radio, even when spotter Jeff Dickerson tried to inject a bit of levity. "Your Broncos are up 7-0," he told Busch during a 10-minute red flag following the Kenseth incident, referring to the driver's favorite NFL team.

"Who gives a [expletive]," Busch retorted.

"He's got to be frustrated," said Rick Hendrick, Busch's former car owner. "To run like he's run, I'm telling you, you've got to learn how to lose. Learning how to win is the easy part. Learning how to lose is the hard part of this deal."

Busch clearly didn't like losing Sunday, when he walked silently past a cluster of reporters gathered behind his No. 18 transporter, briefly entered the hauler, and then took off. Joe Gibbs was inside with him. "He was really disappointed," the former football coach said. "In a situation like that, you don't talk a lot. You let him spend some time by himself. We're still proud of him ... we've just got to find a way to battle back."

That begins next weekend in Dover, where Busch won in the spring. "We're not giving up, trust me," Addington said. "We're not giving up at all. We'll get in there [Monday] morning and get to digging. We've got a test in Atlanta for Goodyear, and we'll just pick up and go on and go to Dover. We won there the first race this year, so I think we can go back and do it again."