LOUDON, N.H. -- With all the talk lately about the Chase for the Sprint Cup being a three-man race, a lot of guys Sunday in the Sylvania 300 had to be thinking about making a statement to the contrary.

Greg Biffle made a late pass of two-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, and with his No. 16 Roush Fenway Racing Ford in New Hampshire Motor Speedway's Victory Lane definitely said loud-and-clear they would be contenders in the fifth annual Chase.

But behind them, a number of good opportunities were missed. But indicating the intensity of the Chase, it'll be interesting to see how the teams of Denny Hamlin, Clint Bowyer and Matt Kenseth respond from New Hampshire's results.

Hamlin, a former NHMS winner, was never out of the top 10 until less than 90 laps remained, and along with Biffle, Hamlin's No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota appeared to have at least as solid a shot to win as anyone else at the front before a question about fuel mileage caused Hamlin's bunch to make a pit stop from third position with about 79 laps remaining.

The resultant loss of track position cost Hamlin, but through hard work on the racetrack he came back to finish ninth. Thus he remained sixth in the championship and, despite taking a few moments to get composed after exiting his Camry; he saw the positives from the rebound.

"Yeah," Hamlin said of making at least some kind of statement. "Those other guys were able to make it [on fuel] and we weren't really counting on that. We had to race our own race and we weren't able to make it on fuel, so we had to make the decisions we had to make because we just couldn't make it."

Hamlin started the race from his sixth-seeded spot after qualifying was rained out and raced into the top five in less than 45 laps. After cycling back, he regained fifth before Lap 120 and was there for nearly 100 laps until the end game began to play out, when the race's fourth of eight cautions flew with 78 laps remaining. Hamlin came out of the pits 18th.

"I thought our performance was good," Hamlin said. "We had a car that was capable of winning right before we decided to stop for fuel. But we can't think about what the other guys are getting for fuel mileage -- all we can do is look at our numbers and the smart move was to come in and pit. We couldn't risk running out.

"It was black-and-white as far as whether we could make it or not -- but we thought it was black-and-white for those other guys. We didn't think they could make it, but they got a lot of cautions and a lot of breaks and things worked out for the guys who wanted to stay out, in their favor with all of those wrecks. But we couldn't count on that because we were not gonna make it without there being a bunch of caution laps like there were, so we had to make the smart play."

In the end Hamlin, who was third and 12th in his other Chase appearance in 2006 and 2007, lost two points, to 72 points behind leader Carl Edwards going to Dover this weekend.

“

We weren't gonna be a factor to win, but we were gonna get a decent finish out of it anyway and try to go onto next week. This isn't the time to have [my first DNF of the season] happen, but those things happen.

”

-- MATT KENSETH

With nine races remaining in the Chase, a hiccup such as Sunday's can be recouped; but Bowyer was still greatly disappointed at his 12th-place result. The defending race champion's No. 07 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet was fastest in the weekend's three practices.

Bowyer's crew had issues most of the day that in the end knocked him back to ninth in the championship, 83 points behind.

"It was a decent day but I'll be honest, I'm disappointed to have finished 12th because I think we had a better car than that," Bowyer said briefly before leaving the venue. "Our pit strategy didn't work out as well as we hoped. We'll be better next week at Dover."

Kenseth's loss was perhaps the most bitter. The man who won the 2003 Cup championship before the Chase format came into play in 2004 had been disgruntled most of the season at the performance of his team's version of NASCAR's new chassis, but despite that Kenseth made his fifth consecutive Chase.

As the race played out, Kenseth used the car he'd re-engineered before the race with crew chief Chip Bolen to solidly get into the top 10 and, even though at the time he'd only advanced one spot from his 12th-seeded Chase opening to 11th, it all vaporized when Kenseth was swallowed up in a wreck involving no less than five cars caused by over-aggressive multi-groove racing on a restart at Lap 229 (watch video).

Kenseth's No. 17 Roush Fenway Ford got hit and spiked into the Turn 4 wall in the melee and after it rebounded, Kenseth's car was speared in the driver's door by David Gilliland's No. 38 Ford.

After he finished 40th, Kenseth remained last in the Chase, but a more critical 177 points behind Edwards, rather than the 80 he came into the Chase behind top seed Kyle Busch.

"That was a couple of hard hits there, the hardest I've hit in a while," Kenseth said. "That's not the way we wanted to go out. All of the guys were doing a really good job. We had good pit stops, good strategy [and] good adjustments [Sunday]."

Kenseth could have been bitterer, as his car was drastically improved from practice, when he was 39th, 20th and 41st in three sessions; but he chose the high road.

"We didn't have much to work with," Kenseth said. "We were really slow and overnight they made the car a lot better. We weren't gonna be a factor to win, but we were gonna get a decent finish out of it anyway and try to go onto next week. This isn't the time to have [my first DNF of the season] happen, but those things happen.

"You just kind of take it one week at a time. We've got to get running better. We were gonna salvage something decent, I thought, after not much of a Friday and Saturday, so we've just got to keep working and get our performance better."