JOLIET, Ill. -- Forty-five minutes after the end of Saturday night's race at Chicagoland Speedway, the only cars still in the garage stall were the top five finishers, undergoing teardown inspection under the eyes of Sprint Cup officials. All the others were loaded up on the big team transporters -- some of which were beginning to rumble to life, back out of their narrow parking spaces, and begin the long haul back to North Carolina.

That's when Dave Rogers emerged from the No. 18 truck, his firesuit long since replaced by street clothes, after an extended meeting with driver Kyle Busch. The subject: why one of NASCAR's best teams suffered through a trying night that saw Busch mired back in the pack for almost the entire event.

“

We got bad-loose, and everything that we threw at it didn't make it better.

”

-- KURT BUSCH

"It was a really productive meeting," Rogers said after a 17th-place result that wasn't as good as it looked. "I'm really proud of Kyle, because this was a great night for him to get frustrated and put it in the fence. With the sponsors we have with M&M's and Snickers, and the resources we have, and with Toyota supporting us, we don't really have any excuses to run back there. I think we have the best driver in the business. Everyone has those days, but I don't think we have any legitimate excuses for those days."

Throughout the garage, it wasn't difficult to find similar lamentations from crew chiefs on championship-contending teams that were wondering what the heck exactly happened Saturday night. From points leader Kevin Harvick, to Kyle and Kurt Busch, to Chase bubble driver Dale Earnhardt Jr., Chicagoland was an abject struggle, with a number of usually solid cars whiffing on setups and spending all evening slogging it out deep in the field. The biggest gambles this weekend in the Joliet area weren't at the riverboat casinos lining the Des Plaines River, but at the 1.5-mile speedway where crew chiefs were left to make guesses on the best way to prepare their cars.

"Anytime we do this, practice in the heat of the day and then race at night, you always keep your fingers crossed that the track conditions are going to come to the way you've tuned your car, and it's a guess. It's a little bit of a guess," said Scott Miller, a former crew chief and current competition director at Richard Childress Racing, which fields Harvick's car. "All these race teams keep really good notes, and we've done this before, but it seems like each time it will take a little bit different turn on you. Even looking back at past history, there are enough things that are different that not even historical notes always pay dividends."

Steve Addington can relate. The crew chief on the No. 2 team worked from his notes from his 2008 victory at Chicagoland with Kyle Busch, and said he spent four hours Friday night going over setup tactics with current driver Kurt Busch. They talked about making big changes, became a little wary of doing so, and fell back on their regular package for 1.5-mile tracks -- not necessarily a reach, given that they've won twice on such intermediate venues so far this year. (Continued)