Rain, competition shrink cutoff margin for Chase (cont'd)

Reutimann knew he'd dodged a bullet and also knew it wasn't going to get much better.

"In the end Rodney made the right call, again, and got us a good finish," Reutimann said. "The car was terrible after we got run over and we were just hanging on after that, but Rodney said we'd just keep coming in and working on it and plugging fuel into it, because he knew there was rain coming, and thank the Lord it did work out for us.

"I know what the points are doing and leave it to me to have the kind of year, trying to make the Chase, where it's this tight. But it is what it is and the fans have to enjoy that, I mean, it's close competition and with the point deal, there's no spread [between positions] so all you have to do is have one bad race and it takes you right out of contention, so I'm thankful for my guys, and where we are."

Of the Chase-contending group, Martin and Montoya were hurt most by the rain's onset. At Lap 225, just before the final green-flag pit sequence began, Montoya was sixth and Martin seventh. After the cars that had to stop for gas had done so Montoya, whose No. 42 Earnhardt Ganassi Racing Chevrolet wasn't as good at the end of the race as it had been for most of it, was 12th, still a career-best Loudon finish, and Martin was 14th.

While Montoya held steady in 12th, despite seeing his advantage over 13th place Kahne shrink to a single point, he's only nine points behind 11th place Martin and 40 points out of 10th. The bigger plus was the finish, despite breaking a streak of three consecutive top-eights, was his sixth top-12 in the past eight races.

"[The rain] cost us a top-10, obviously; the 9 [Kahne] was good and the 00 kinda lucked into it a little bit, but this is what we've got to do, keep coming in here with top-10 cars and we're gonna finish there more times than not," Montoya's crew chief, Brian Pattie, said. "It just shows you how far this team has come. This team is solid and it's fun to race like this. We unloaded Friday and were dead-last on the chart for the first 15 minutes and ended up third.

"So we can recover and we're getting there. We're not the 48 team [three-time defending Cup champion Jimmie Johnson] by no means, but give us a little time and we'll be there."

Kahne wasn't thrilled to finish 10th, after having a car that appeared to be coming to the front at the end, but at least he made it back to about where his Richard Petty Motorsports Dodge was, ninth, when the pit cycle began. Even more importantly, its fourth top-10 in the past six races continued the momentum from the team's win a week before at Sonoma.

"We had a great race car," Kahne's crew chief, Kenny Francis, said. "Loudon's a tough place to call a race and I made a bad call in the middle of the race and got us messed up on track position. The crew guys did a great job and Kasey did a really good job driving.

"It's just real important to be gaining on our problem tracks. Loudon is probably one of our worst tracks and I think that there was a couple of stretches during the race that he was the fastest car and you can't ask for more than that. Of course, Sonoma was our old nemesis and we won there. We felt like our car could have won this race.

"We'll just keep after it and try to get them at Daytona. It's just nice to know that we can gain on it and feel like we're a lot more consistent week to week and that's what we're shooting for."

And as if it wasn't nerve-wracking enough that the greater measure of an entire season will be determined following the next nine races -- after Richmond when the Chase field is set -- the most nerve-wracking fact about points is the series next hits Daytona International Speedway, the third of four restrictor-plate races where 400 miles of close-quarters pack racing on a slick track can wreak havoc on teams' best-laid plans and create unusual results.

"It's definitely going to be a battle next week," Pattie said, letting out a long sigh. "Obviously, it's the chink in the armor and Daytona is going to be a 'hope you make it out' kind of deal. The tires weren't very good in February so hopefully they've got that figured out. It's gonna be interesting."

That's an understatement for Jeff Burton, who's made the past three Chases but who fell a spot in the standings, to 16th though still a manageable 108 points behind Montoya. Perhaps a critical move by Burton's No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet crew was putting him back on track after he was in the restart skirmish, which gained them six spots in the rundown.

"We needed a real good finish for the points, but we needed a good run," Burton said after finishing 31st. "If we run well enough, the points will take care of themselves. There's still plenty of time. Nine races is an eternity in this sport. The Chase is 10 races long and think about all the stuff that happens in 10 races. So this is nine races and we still can do it; it's going to be hard, but we can do it.

"It's very frustrating, it's just been that kind of year [but] my guys did an awesome job. We've worked really hard. I can tell you my car won't be repaired, it is killed [and] that's another car we've lost at a time when we're trying to build new and better stuff.

"We're all racing for the points trying to get in the Chase and this sets us back on that. But it is what it is, we didn't do anything wrong, we had a good race car, my guys did an awesome job, I was proud of them and we'll go fight next week."