Lone Star state dishes out disappointment, frustration

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Everything is bigger in Texas.

The steaks. The football stadiums. The race track seating capacities.

And the frustration.

"This place sucks," Sprint Cup rookie Joey Logano said after a trying Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway, where he was trapped a lap down by a caution, struggled to find speed in his No. 20 car, and eventually finished 19th. He was far from alone in his disappointment. In one afternoon, the points leader crashed, a handful of title contenders got caught up in accidents, and a number of drivers poised for high finishes -- including Kyle Busch, who led 232 of 334 laps -- saw their chances burn up along with the final drops of gasoline in their fuel tanks. Needless to say, there was plenty of grousing to go around.

Texas tribulations

Video captures the collective disappointment for several drivers at Sunday's Dickies 500

• Johnson crashes early
• Montoya, Edwards hit the wall
• Johnson in the garage
• Final Laps: Gas gamble
• Race Rewind: Texas

"It was a good race and it ran me out of gas," said David Reutimann, who was in the top five until the fuel shortage knocked him out of the running. "That's about it."

There were enough hard feelings, recriminations, and woulda-coulda-shouldas to fill the Dallas Cowboys' mammoth new stadium. Contact between Reutimann and Sam Hornish Jr. collected championship leader Jimmie Johnson, and chopped his lead over Mark Martin down from 184 to 73 points. Busch dominated the event before running out of gas with two laps to go, all but handing the event to his older brother Kurt. Chase drivers Carl Edwards and Juan Montoya went spinning, knocking the former out of the race and sending the latter 101 laps down.

Memo to track president Eddie Gossage: those pearl-handled Beretta six-shooters awarded to the winner? Keep 'em under lockdown until everyone leaves town.

"I just wish the 77 [car of Hornish] could have ran to the bottom and held onto his car," Johnson grumbled before he had seen a replay of the third-lap wreck that ultimately sent him to 38th place. "He seems to lose control of that thing a lot, and hit a lot of things throughout the course of a race."

Edwards was equally as disappointed after Montoya hooked his No. 99 car, an altercation that sent both vehicles spinning. The ensuing contact with the wall basically ripped the rear wing off the back of Edwards' vehicle, and the result was 39th place. "Well, I guess I'm going to win the race home," he said.

"I didn't expect it, especially from Juan. He's got great car control. His car must have been really loose and it just snapped on him. It looked like he needed another couple of inches, and it wasn't there. But that's racing."

Texas proved a slippery place for even top drivers like Jeff Gordon, who spun out on his own as he tried to avoid the wreck ahead of him involving Edwards and Montoya. Finding grip was only one of the problems faced by Logano, who started 14th and went backward after getting trapped on pit road by a caution. He spent most of the event just trying to make up lost ground.

"As the track cooled off and got more grip, we started getting more speed," he said. "By the end of the race, our speeds weren't that bad, we were just further behind from during the day. We have to figure out how to get around these less-grip race tracks."

And then there was the fuel situation, which completely jumbled the top five. With 14 laps remaining, Kyle Busch was in command, while Reutimann was in third, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was in fourth, and Marcos Ambrose was in fifth. One by one, those drivers were forced vacate their positions and duck in for a splash-and-go. Busch wound up 11th, Reutimann 16th, Ambrose 15th, and Earnhardt 25th after his car stalled out on pit road.

"Just really disappointing," Ambrose said. "I thought we were two laps short, so I was trying to save two laps, and I just didn't save enough fuel. The guys were screaming on the radio. I guess I didn't realize how close we were on fuel, so I feel pretty bad."

Sunday at Texas, he was far from the only one.