Gordon rallied for a ninth-place finish after restarting at the tail of the field for the 34-lap run to the checkered flag, but was still kicking himself over the pit-road gaffe.

"You know, it’s one thing when you don’t feel you have the car underneath you or you’re just missing something, but when it’s on you — whether it’s a pit-crew guy, a crew chief or a driver — it hurts, you know," Gordon said. "And that’s the way I feel right now. I feel pain because we had a golden opportunity right there and I ruined it for us.

"We’re going to get it all together. We’re going to start clicking. We just haven’t been clicking all at one time. As hard as everyone worked, gosh, I just hate it that I made that mistake."

Gordon started fourth in the 43-car field, but uncharacteristically faded early on, sliding all the way back to 15th place by the time the race’s third caution flag flew on Lap 55. It wasn’t until after the halfway point that crew chief Alan Gustafson’s adjustments started to take, helping Gordon’s No. 24 move forward in the unseasonably cool conditions as the .526-mile track began to build up tire rubber.

"It was a struggle, let me tell you," Gordon said. "You know, we had such a great starting position and a great pit stall that I was looking forward to getting up there and hopefully leading some laps, but man, they started the race and I just got so loose so quick, and I was afraid of that. I mentioned that before the race … when this place isn’t laying rubber, we seem to really struggle with wearing out the left-rear tire really bad. We’ve had this happen to us in the past when it’s cold like this, and it really bit us today.

"I’m so proud of Alan and everyone on this Axalta Chevrolet because they made some great adjustments to get the car where it needed to be. Finally, the rubber started getting down on the track a little bit and then we finally were able to start making some ground up."

The ground came in bunches once the race wound toward a conclusion, with Gordon returning to the top-five shortly after the 300-lap mark. The outlook brightened as the sun dipped lower, with Gordon scooting past Matt Kenseth and into the lead for the first time all day at Lap 442.

But when the race’s final yellow flew with 40 laps left in the 500-lapper, Gordon was flagged for being too fast in Section 5, the last timing segment on Martinsville’s curved pit road and the one containing his pit stall.

"Oh my God, you’re kidding me," Gordon radioed his crew once informed of the infraction. "Sorry, guys. That’s on me. I apologize."

Though it wasn’t the tall, wooden timepiece he wanted, there potentially was some solace to be taken in scoring his third straight top-10 finish after a three-race stretch of uneven results to open the season. Matching his season’s best effort — ninth at Phoenix International Raceway — helped Gordon rise five spots to 17th in the Sprint Cup standings heading into an idle week for the series.

Gordon just missed qualifying for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup‘s Championship round last season. With the strides that he made in battling back Sunday, Gordon said he thinks returning the No. 24 to championship-level form may not be far away.

"At the start of the race, I was very concerned that we just missed it and didn’t have what it took," Gordon said. "As we made adjustments and we really started becoming competitive, that’s when I started getting excited that we are as good as we were last year, as good as I feel like we can be. It’s been up and down this year, so we need these kind of performances."

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The result also reversed the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 10 Chevrolet team’s trend of starting well and fading over the course of the race. Once she and crew chief Daniel Knost got on the same page, Patrick slipped into the top 10 — by Lap 395 in the 500-lap race — and clipped off positions over the final three green-flag runs to the checkered flag.

"The middle of the race was where we started improving, so I think this is a step in the right direction of a better trend of our communication and what we’re doing, and we still learned out there," Patrick said. "At one point in time I said that that change didn’t — the changes didn’t work, and I was like, I think maybe we should go this direction, and after the stop I said, ‘did you take that change out of the right-front that I asked for?’ And he said no, and I said, ‘when I say it’s not better, take it all out.’ You dial yourself out very fast in these cars.

"We’re still learning, but it wasn’t too big of a problem, and once we got that out, that’s actually our best run, I think, was that one."

In true Martinsville fashion, the close-quarters layout led to some rough-and-tumble moments, especially when she stayed out on older tires, restarting second on the 101st lap.

"We just weren’t very good to start," Patrick said. "We took a chance and stayed out on a yellow, and we were front row, and I bet I looked like an idiot out there. I spun the wheels on the start and hung on a little bit, but then ended up going backwards in a hurry."

Despite the momentary retreat, Patrick held her ground. She also avoided Paul Menard‘s spinning car in the 367th lap, swerving wide to keep her momentum rolling. Despite her car enduring the customary short-track bumps and bruises, Patrick emerged bent but not broken.

"It’s all a matter of luck, too," Patrick said of avoiding Menard. "I could have got drilled from the back and hit into the car. I could have swerved to the right and had somebody clip my right rear and spun, somebody could have been out there. Crashes are about observing where you’re at and making a good decision about where to go, but they’re also about luck. I got lucky that there was nothing in my way to get around that one. That would have probably wrecked my day."

Knost, in his first full season as Patrick’s crew chief, also had some positive Martinsville history on his side. In this race last season, he called the shots for Kurt Busch‘s come-from-behind victory in the SHR No. 41, something Knost said helped carry over for Patrick on Sunday.

"I would say very similar. They’re a little bit different driver and so you’ve got to make things to fit their style, but in general, I’ve seen things work with Kurt, Ryan (Newman), Tony Stewart … I mean, there’s just certain things that seem to work at Martinsville," Knost said.

"This track evolves a lot through the weekend and through the race, and I think if you have a plan of a way to attack it, you kind of know which sequence you want to do things in, and it hopefully works out, and it did today."

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"Just a lot of checking up getting into (Turn) 1," Earnhardt said. "Somebody must’ve gotten turned sideways. They all stopped pretty hard getting in the corner and it happens here. We were in the back of it and couldn’t get slowed down, knocked the radiator out of it. It, just, it happens. You get back in the back there and get in that heavy traffic. It’s good, fun racing, though."

Earnhardt drove his battered Hendrick Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet back to the garage area, promptly hopped out and tried to jack up the rear of the car to assist repairs. He returned to the track in the 276th lap, 47 laps down and in a car stripped of its front-end sheet metal, crumpled when he slammed into the rear of Paul Menard‘s No. 27.

The crash, though, was just the capper for a series of trouble that caused the No. 88 team to spend extended time on pit road. Earnhardt reported having a severe vibration in his transmission, shaking so bad that his shifter snapped off. The team’s first makeshift lever also failed shortly thereafter, forcing the team to try its third pseudo-shifter before the crash interrupted Earnhardt’s race.

"My car was really, really good except we had a real, real bad vibration in the drive train that kept breaking the shifters off right on top of the transmission," Earnhardt said. "It’s vibrating real bad and that shifter’s like a tuning fork and it just snaps it right on top of the transmission, so I can’t even … there’s nothing there to use. We finally put a third shifter on it that was unlike anything else we’ve had in the car. I don’t know whether that would’ve lasted the rest of the day, but the car was great and just bad luck there being in the back."

The reversal of fortune was abrupt for Earnhardt, who celebrated wildly last fall but will have little to cheer this spring.

"I’ve had a lot of good cars here," Earnhardt said with a shrug. "You’ve got to be toward the front and out of trouble, man. We weren’t there. We were in the back, and … high risk back there. It bit us today. I’m not going to second-guess what we’re doing, and I feel like our team’s strong. We won’t have any problem coming back."

The No. 88 driver finished 36th, but he tweeted that he is looking forward to returning to Martinsville in October.

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It’s a measure of just how dominant the 2014 series champion has been over the past nine races, with his clipped post-race comments providing the proof of a frustrated feeling following a day that nearly every other driver would celebrate.

"Everybody did a good job, just lost track position at the wrong time," Harvick said before power-walking down pit road toward his hauler.

The top-10 result ended a streak of eight consecutive races in which Harvick finished in the top two. Richard Petty still holds the all-time such streak at 11 consecutive races.

For a while, it looked like "The King" was closer to having some company. Harvick, who started 17th, drove through the field — no easy feat at the tight 0.526-mile oval — and cracked the top five by Lap 50. He stayed in the top five through the next 400 laps, with most of that stretch resulting in a top-two position.

Harvick didn’t slip out of the top five until the laps following a caution for a Carl Edwards spin on Lap 434. Coming off pit road third, heavy congestion on the ensuing restart shuffled Harvick down to 10th place.

The day’s 16th and final caution came shortly thereafter on Lap 461, and Harvick came out poised to make a run on the inside. But Jeff Gordon was issued a penalty for speeding on pit road, shuffling the running order and putting Harvick in 10th — in other words, putting him on the non-preferred outside lane of the fifth row.

"I think that’ll get us," crew chief Rodney Childers said over the radio. "… Yeah, that’ll screw us."

On an outside lane that wasn’t gaining ground, Harvick eventually slipped down to the bottom groove and made up two positions over the final 30 laps.

"I just got hung on the outside and couldn’t get back down," Harvick said. "By the time I got down, I was 10th or 11th. It still was a good day."

Good for him, but perhaps great for anyone else.

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