BRISTOL, Tenn. -- It was obvious early that two of the faster race cars in the Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday night were the No. 11 Toyota driven by Denny Hamlin and the No. 2 Dodge piloted by Kurt Busch.

“

It was a good finish for us, and that's what we needed. Now we should be able to kind of cruise to the Chase from here.

”

-- DENNY HAMLIN

It also appeared just as obvious at various stages later on that through mostly bad luck and also some mistakes by the drivers and their respective teams, both were destined to finish poorly. That, however, turned out to be a wrong assumption when both Hamlin and Busch overcame adversity to post strong finishes that helped solidify their places in the point standings.

Hamlin finished fifth in the race and sits fourth in the standings with only two races remaining before the cutoff that will determine the 12 drivers who qualify for this year's Chase. Busch finished seventh and sits sixth in the standings heading into the final two regular-season races at Atlanta and Richmond, respectively.

"It was a good finish for us, and that's what we needed. Now we should be able to kind of cruise to the Chase from here," Hamlin said.

Busch added: "I thought we had a car that could win."

Hamlin started 41st in the 43-car field after spoiling his qualifying run on Friday by spinning out. But he quickly began picking his way through the field toward the front in Saturday's race, moving up 16 spots in the first 50 laps.

Then bad luck struck and he had a left front tire go down following contact with another car, causing him to fall one lap down. Yet he and his No. 11 team refused to panic, even when he subsequently was penalized for pitting before pit road was open on Lap 64 (watch video).

Suddenly, after working so hard to come from 41st to 25th, he was mired back in 37th place. That was the bad news. The good news was that there were still more than 400 laps left to run at the half-mile short track.

"Fortunately for us, it was early in the race. We just passed a ginormous amount of cars. I don't even know what the number was," Hamlin said. "But I had to be patient. I had to take my time to get my lap back. I knew once I got my lap back, we had a fast car and we were going to be all fine. I knew we could drive back up there because we did it earlier in the day, so I wasn't too concerned. I just had to keep telling myself to be patient."

Eventually, Hamlin maneuvered himself into position to where he was the first car not on the lead lap, and he subsequently earned the free pass back onto the lead lap during the next caution.

“

We managed to finish seventh with it. It was a good top-five car, a car that I thought could win even.

”

-- KURT BUSCH

Busch didn't have the luxury of allowing himself to be too patient when his own waves of adversity struck later in the race. He started 13th but moved into the top five quickly and was running fourth by Lap 50 and second behind then-leader Mark Martin by Lap 100.

He remained in the top five much of the rest of the night, until Lap 439 when the No. 77 Dodge of Busch's Penske Racing teammate, Sam Hornish Jr., hit the No. 07 of Casey Mears from behind, and Mears in turn ran into Busch, causing extensive damage to Busch's car (watch video). Earlier, loose lug nuts on a pit stop also caused him to have to come back around to the pits. Combined with the untimely accident, Busch dropped all the way to 22nd in seemingly the blink of an eye.

With only 50 laps remaining, it looked bleak. But by Lap 475, Busch had driven his mangled car back up to his original starting position -- and it was so fast that crew chief Pat Tryson thought they could ultimately have finished even higher than seventh if the No. 2 Dodge hadn't gotten stuck on the inside lane on the final double-file restart of the night.

"We might have picked up a couple more positions. We knew we were fast and I didn't have to give Kurt any pep talks to keep him calm. He kept on coming and was going to get all he could get," Tryson said.

"The car was good all night. We just had a little problem on pit road and then had another problem when we got collected in that wreck, which put us behind. Kurt did an awesome job getting us back up there, and got us some of the positions that we lost. It's a shame [the loose lug nuts] happened. But it's all part of the game. You don't always have a perfect night. We salvaged a good night out of it, and that was the biggest thing."

Busch added: "We managed to finish seventh with it, and that was due mostly to some loose lug nuts. It was a good top-five car, a car that I thought could win even. It was good to run that well here with [the new car]. We hadn't done that since we started using that car at Bristol."

Thus, both Busch and Hamlin left the track satisfied with hard-earned, decent points days when it could have been a disaster.

"I just want to know how many cars we passed," Hamlin said. "That would be an interesting stat. If I had to guess, I would say 120. Literally I wasn't passed once under green unless I was on the bottom on a restart. We were that fast.

"I'll be honest with you. It is fun, so I can't complain too much. If we had had problems at the end and had a flat tire or something like that, that would have really [ticked] me off. But to be honest, it's kind of fun starting in the back and passing all those cars -- as long as it works out with a good finish in the end."