When it was all over, a night that started with such promise ended with a 31st-place finish, and a substantial shuffling of the drivers vying for the final positions into the Chase. Out of the top 10 fell Busch and reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Brad Keselowski, neither of whom has a victory yet this season. And into the top 10 charged Joey Logano, who backed up his Michigan victory with a fifth-place result that vaulted him to 10th in points with two races remaining in the regular season.

“It feels good,” Logano said. “I tell you what, I’m worn out because that was a lot of work. I dug my heart out, and this whole team dug their heart out the whole day, and this is what we’ve got to do. This is the only way we’re going to make the Chase.”

Emotions were very different elsewhere in the garage. Keselowski was caught up in an eight-car accident that unfolded when Brian Vickers bounced down into Denny Hamlin, who cut a tire and ricocheted up into Kevin Harvick. Keselowski’s car was seriously damaged and finished 30th, dropping him to 11th in points and outside of Wild Card position. Heading to Atlanta Motor Speedway, those two spots belong to Martin Truex Jr. (14th in the standings) — who despite being caught up in the same crash benefited from race runner-up Kasey Kahne moving back into the top 10 — and Ryan Newman (15th in the standings).

“I’m not going to be out of the worried zone unless I make it or it’s over,” Keselowski said. “That’s my job as a race car driver. I care about my team. We’ve got two races left. I think they’ll be good race tracks for us. Obviously, today was not a great day for us. We’ve tested at the next two tracks and we’re going to be very competitive. I feel like this is going to come down to the last lap at Richmond, and I’m ready for that battle.”

No one, though, withstood a bigger blow than Busch, whose car was fast all weekend and qualified on the outside of the front row. He’s dealt with similar heartbreak before this year — he was leading the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte when he had to pit with a dead battery — but not with so much on the line. Busch’s third-place finish last week at Michigan lifted him to ninth in points, but after Saturday night’s problems he tumbled to 12th.

“I guess we had a right-rear hub fail where the studs pulled through or they weren’t tightened or assembled. I don’t know, just a right-rear hub failure,” Busch said. “Now we have to go back and diagnosis that. When you are 20 laps down, there is nothing you can do. We just rode around, and we are down, but we are not out. I guess at the end of the race we gained a bunch of points back with guys having trouble. My thoughts all through the race were we just have to go to Atlanta and Richmond and win them both.”

Busch was perhaps helped somewhat by late-race issues suffered by standings leaders Jimmie Johnson and Clint Bowyer, as well as the eight-car accident. But it was still a setback for a single-car Furniture Row Racing team which is up against burgeoning powerhouse Stewart-Haas Racing in its bid to try and retain Busch for next season.

For now, though, the driver’s focus is making the playoff with his current team.

“We are down, but we are not out,” Busch said. “We have two races to go, and I heard we are only five points out of 10th.”

Close — it’s six. Keselowski is four points out of the top 10, while his Penske Racing teammate Logano is four points in. On a night when so many championship hopefuls battled problems, Logano was clearly fired up about overcoming issues that included having his right-front quarterpanel knocked in and getting blocked on pit road.

“They can’t put us down and can’t keep us down,” Logano said. “This team is awesome. We deserve to make this Chase, and if we keep doing this on days that they’re trying to put us down, we deserve it.”

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In the end, it was all just too much. Although Busch clung to the top 10 for much of the race and made one awe-inspiring save to stay there, his green car faded over the event’s final run and the Joe Gibbs Racing driver was forced to settle for 11th. It was an anticlimactic evening for a driver who had won the track’s Camping World Truck Series race Wednesday night, and dominated the facility’s Nationwide Series event Saturday.

“Bittersweet,” Rogers called it afterward, as teammate Matt Kenseth celebrated in Victory Lane. “In the end I think I should be satisfied with almost a top 10, but truthfully I’m really discouraged. Because it’s still Kyle Busch, and it’s still Bristol. He’s one of the best there ever was here. Obviously, the equipment JGR is producing is good enough to win. … We just couldn’t get it done this week. Disappointed, but a good points day.”

Certainly considering where they had started. Busch’s qualifying crash forced him to start 43rd, a position from which no Sprint Cup driver has won in NASCAR’s modern era. The lowest any Bristol winner has started is 38th (Elliott Sadler in 2001), and the lowest Busch has started in any of his victories is 30th (Sonoma in 2008). Although two premier-series drivers have won from 43rd — Johnny Mantz at Darlington and Fonty Flock at Raleigh — both of those feats occurred in the 1950s, and in fields greater than 43 cars.

So Busch was up against it from the very beginning, and it showed as he struggled to avoid being lapped in the race’s opening segment. A caution for a Ryan Truex accident saved him there, and he was rescued again when leader Clint Bowyer collided with Travis Kvapil just as he was approaching the No. 18 car at the tail end of the lead lap. In between there had been a bobble up into the wall that bent the vehicle’s splitter and required two jaunts down pit road for repairs.

“We’re back there racing guys that aren’t racing on the budget we have, and don’t have the equipment we have, and we were having a really tough time passing them,” Rogers said. “I was like, wow, our car was really off. Then the 20 car (of Kenseth) got back there, and they had just as much trouble passing the same people. Track position just meant so much.”

Hence, the strategy to stay out and gamble on fuel. By skipping a pit stop Busch moved up to second, and though he didn’t maintain that position for very long, the strategy move at least gave the No. 18 a chance at a strong finish on a night where things could have easily turned the other way. That was certainly evident at one point in the second half of the race, when Busch was bumped from behind and somehow kept his vehicle pointed straight despite a massive fishtail that had everyone holding their breath.

“Wow. Great catch,” Tony Hirschman said from up on the spotter’s stand. “Deep breath, and let’s wind ‘er up again.”

“You’re the man, buddy,” Rogers added. “You’re the man.”

But there was only so much Busch could do. The fuel strategy worked, getting Busch to the checkered with gas still left in the tank. But but the car didn’t respond like Busch hoped on the final restart, and another big bobble dropped him back to 13th. The tires were getting older — Busch stayed out the final 160 laps — and all the dings and dents from all the earlier incidents were adding up. At that point it was just a matter of hanging on and salvaging the best finish possible.

“Not what we wanted to do,” Rogers said, “but it was the hand I had.”

Busch couldn’t be located for comment, but his frustration was evident over the radio during the race. “Going backward,” he said at one point. It certainly wasn’t a triumphant capper to a weekend tripleheader sweep, like the one he recorded at Bristol in the late summer of 2010. But as far as his team was concerned, it could have been much worse.

“I saw him afterwards and just talked to him briefly, but obviously he was frustrated,” team president J.D. Gibbs said, “but my fear is it would have been a lot worse. (He) kind of gathered it up, came back, and had a respectable finish. So I was proud of those guys, what he and Dave Rogers did tonight.”

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