Outsiders like to put Martin Truex Jr. in the middle of the cesspool that NASCAR's Silly Season generally becomes about this time of the year, but right now Truex's Dale Earnhardt Inc. race team is more concerned with qualifying for their second consecutive Chase.

The driver smiled, kicking back on his golf cart, when a visitor to his spot in the sodden driver/owner motor-home lot after Sunday's Lenox Industrial Tools 301 asked if he was a golfer.

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Truex, of course, is an avid outdoorsman, choosing not to waste much time hunting little white balls -- though he excitedly did say he was hosting his first charity golf tournament in the near future.

But the point was, Sunday's unlikely fourth-place finish brought to mind that old scraggly golfer's saying that's usually cited after a particularly ugly swing or shot ends up either in the hole or close by it.

"It ain't how, it's how many ..."

Truex wasn't too familiar with it, but he sure smiled as he contemplated his finish, which came at a critical time with only nine races remaining until the cutoff for the Chase.

Even though he was nearly beside himself after battling a poorly handling No. 1 Chevrolet for most of the rain-shortened event, Truex could still appreciate the positive outcome that looked mighty gruesome on its way to fruition.

"We've been on the wrong side of this stuff before -- this is the first time this has ever happened to me," Truex said, the relief shining on his face as if it were the setting sun that wouldn't appear on this bleak evening. But he quickly got serious.

"I don't like finishing fourth that way -- I'd rather run fourth. But we've run better throughout the year and had terrible finishes, so this kind of makes up for those, a little."

But only a little for Truex, the two-time then-Busch Series champion who won his first Cup race last year on his way to qualifying for his first Chase. No matter what the future holds, he's determined to run better, and right now.

"We didn't run good enough [Sunday]," Truex said. "We were really good the first two runs and then we got really, really tight and we never could get it any better. I don't know why.

"We fight this problem every single week. We start the race good, or we end Happy Hour good and then the race starts and we just get worse and worse and worse. We adjust everything we want on our car and it doesn't change a thing."

The more he talked, the more the genial New Jersey youngster's face resembled the angry skies that were still spitting rain. NASCAR's new car has done that to a lot of people this season.

"We did everything we could think of, to free it up, and it didn't work," Truex said, his voice rising. "So we started going the opposite way, we thought. It didn't even make it tighter!

"I don't know what the hell's going on -- but we got a lot of work to do. I'm frustrated at how we ran and I'm glad with how we finished -- that helped us in the points. We still got a shot to make the Chase, but we gotta go."

Truex actually moved up three spots, to 14th in the standings and to within 71 points of 12th, the final qualified spot for the Chase; but even as he said the finish was a psychological boost to the team, it couldn't end now.

"We still got to go," Truex said. "But that's great. We made a lot of mistakes and had some bad luck earlier in the season, and that put us 17th. I don't think we should be there, as a race team -- but at the same time, we got to go, we got to get our cars better and it's time.

"We need to make it happen."

Truex has been short on results at the past four restrictor-plate races, though his best two, 13th at the 2007 Pepsi 400 and 20th at this year's Daytona 500, have come at this weekend's venue.

"With this [new] car, we've been struggling with it on the bigger tracks," Truex said. "Daytona's a crap shoot -- roll the dice. So we'll see what happens."

What a difference five minutes makes

Incredibly, considering how he's run all season, Sunday's finish was Bobby Labonte's first top-10 of the year. Labonte was 26th when he stayed out on the last pit sequence, putting him in eighth -- the last of the drivers who elected not to pit.

Considering the circumstances Labonte, who ran the first quarter of the race in the top 10 before he fell back to become mired in the 20s for the second half, was the only one who went backwards, to 10th, and his immediate reaction reflected how he really felt.

"We didn't get the job done [Sunday] -- I don't know the reason," Labonte said. "We just didn't get it done."

The interesting thing came in Labonte's post-race notes package, which arrived the next day, apparently taking advantage of a proper cool-down period -- or via a different translator.

"Jeff [Meendering, crew chief] made great calls all day long on pit road [and] that allowed us to pick up track position at the right time," Labonte said. "Everyone knew that rain would be coming through the area later in the day. On our last pit stop we just took fuel and that put us close to our fuel window.

"We never came back in and were sitting in the top 10 when the rain fell. You don't like to manufacture finishes like this all the time, but we'll take it now."

Labonte picked up two spots in the standings, to 21st.

Roush Fenway Day

A NASCAR trip to New Hampshire began with a baseball trip to Fenway Park.

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Sports heaven

Let me tell you, for a Massachusetts native and a motorsports professional, it doesn't get much better than standing down on the immaculate turf of Fenway Park for a couple of hours, hanging out, talking baseball and off-time.

What was the most fascinating aspect?

Besides the condition of the playing surface and the almost robotic techniques with which it's prepared and reconditioned during the game, it was the low-key, respectful way in which the baseball and racing athletes mingled -- as well as the interaction between the racing and baseball executives and the athletes.

What was the highlight?

It had to be watching a total stranger cutting through the dugout to wish Terry Francona, "Good luck, Skip," and seeing the manager's warm and sincere thanks.

Big breath of fresh air

That was an understatement after J.J. Yeley scored his best finish in more than a year, third, for Hall of Fame Racing, just a week after missing the race at Sonoma. The former Sprint Car racer, Yeley is one of the best at "manning-up" after a bad time.

After the narrowest of DNQs at Infineon Raceway, he didn't slink off over the horizon, as easy as that would have been -- and he deserves a lot of credit for that.

"To go out [to Sonoma] and miss the race by five one-hundredths [and] get ourselves further behind [in the owner points] was devastating," Yeley said on Sunday. "It made it even worse because I had to stay there Sunday, and I had to do hospitality and I had to go see fans.

"You try to explain to people why you missed the race -- it is the toughest thing in the world. It's very surreal. Sitting in the grandstands or sitting in the suite having to watch the entire race makes you want it even worse than you could have ever possibly imagined."

It'll be interesting to see what kind of fire Sunday's outcome lit.

"It's going to give the guys hope and that's the most important thing," Yeley said. "It is easy to say, like Kasey Kahne, you run off of confidence in this sport, [but] if everyone is happy, everyone is going to work harder, you're going to go out and run better [and] hopefully this is just a sign of things to come."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.