LOUDON, N.H. -- When Kurt Busch took the lead from Jimmie Johnson coming out of the final restart inside the final 10 laps of the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 on Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, he was hoping he would have enough speed to make it stand. He didn't, and eventually settled for third.

And despite posting his fourth top-six finish in the past five races, an opportunity was lost to gain bonus points as he looks to close the gap before the start of the Chase, which will begin at this very track in September.

“

For us, to take a fifth- to 10th-place car and throw it into third place at the end, even giving it a shot to win, that was a great feeling to know that, hey, we can battle these guys and we just came up a bit short.

”

-- KURT BUSCH

"The thought was 10 points [for] winning would look a lot better stacked in our deck than his [Johnson's] chip count," said Busch, who has 20 bonus points to Johnson's 50, whose victory at New Hampshire matched Denny Hamlin for the most.

"It would have been great to hold those guys off. They win quite often. They have fast cars. Sometimes you do the best with what you've got and we did great with our Penske Dodge [Sunday]."

In fact, Busch called his finish "an overachievement."

"We just didn't have overall speed throughout the day," Busch said. "For us, to take a fifth- to 10th-place car and throw it into third place at the end, even giving it a shot to win, that was a great feeling to know that, hey, we can battle these guys and we just came up a bit short."

Busch is sixth in the standings. Only points leader Kevin Harvick (12) and second place Johnson (11) have more top-10s than Busch's 10. His seven top-fives are one behind Johnson and Jeff Gordon for the most in the Cup Series.

Busch, who is 201 points behind Harvick, knows there is ground to make up, and where it needs to start.

"There's guys that are stronger than us," Busch said. "There's some areas of our team that I can rate as a B-plus instead of an A. Once we correct some of these ... trying to make the car faster or whether it's a little bit in the motor department, you look at all areas and try to make it better.

"We were a bit strung out there during the race -- there were so many green-flag laps. It was just the only speed that we had. All in all where we were [Sunday] and Saturday, we just couldn't quite make the car any better through adjustments."

Busch's car was best on short runs, but when it mattered most it didn't have the power to beat Johnson's.

"He beat us with raw speed," Busch said. "We didn't have a winning car, but we put it in a position to get a win. We just have to make the car a little better during the race to hold the guys off when we do get in [the] lead position."