NASCAR Notebook: Late pit-stop problem costly for Kyle Busch

■ Kyle Busch now wears a question mark because, after dominating the first seven months of the NASCAR season, he might well be the best driver in stock-car racing today has gone stone cold.

Now maybe Friday night's win in the Nationwide series -- his 20th major NASCAR touring win of the year, an amazing run in Cup, Nationwide and Trucks -- was a turning point. And Saturday night's comeback from a lap down to finish fourth in the Bank of America 500 was a bit of icing on the weekend cake at Lowe's Motor Speedway for Busch.

But it's too little, too late.

That fourth-place finish was his first in the top 10 since a seventh at California's Auto Club Speedway Labor Day weekend.

So, the driver who should be running away with the Sprint Cup championship goes to Martinsville this week 326 points behind tour leader Jimmie Johnson with five races left.

"I made a mistake -- and sped on pit road on the second-to-last stop, and you can't have that at the end of the race," Busch said of the bobble that may have cost him a win on Saturday night.

This race was won and lost on pit road as much as on the track. Finding the right chassis setup was nearly impossible. Johnson looked as if he was ready to take command early in the final 100 miles, but he faded to sixth, and Jeff Burton -- with a sharp pit-stop gamble by crew chief Scott Miller -- got the lead on lap 278 and held it the rest of the way.

Busch's problem came on lap 225, when he was caught speeding onto pit road. The pass-through penalty dropped him a lap down. But Busch wasn't through and he charged back to 10th for the final restart with 50 miles to go and managed to get back up to fourth.

"After speeding on pit road," Busch said, "it was just a free-for-all from there on out. Going to the top-side three-wide….

"It was the best the car at the end of the race."

Still, it was no win, place or show for any of the Joe Gibbs guys.

Denny Hamlin, recovering from last week's hard hit at Talladega, finished 16th, and teammate Tony Stewart, also hit with a pit road speeding penalty, finished 11th, leaving him 228 points behind Johnson.

Nevertheless Toyota drivers showed power. Brian Vickers led 64 laps, three shy of Johnson's evening-best 67.

"It's good to know we finally ran well again on a 11/2-mile track," Busch said, looking ahead to similar intermediate tracks at Atlanta, Texas and Homestead.

"We've got to get through Martinsville and keep going from there."

Stewart's crew chief, Greg Zipadelli, called the four-hour race "an up-and-down night. We had a much better car than that.

"But we got caught speeding on pit road and got a lap down under green. And those last 30 laps everybody is up on the wheel, so it's pretty hard to make any ground."

■ Jeff Burton, at 41, vs. 23-year-old Kyle Busch and 29-year-old Carl Edwards and 33-year-old Jimmie Johnson, and even 39-year-old Greg Biffle, is decidedly the veteran in this season's championship Chase.

"Someone asked me about age -- why I pick drivers -- well, not in their golden years but in their good years I call them," car owner Richard Childress said of Burton. "But Dale Earnhardt in 2000 finished second (in the title race), and he was 48, 49. And we were going to win the championship the following year.

"Age is only in your mind. If you take care of your body, your mind will be good."

■ Scott Miller's wining late-race gamble -- a no-tire, gas-only stop? At Lowes Motor Speedway?

Certainly an eyebrow raiser.

Miller, Jeff Burton's crew chief, isn't known for being a risk taker, like say Chad Knaus or even Bob Osborne.

"We're going to make the calls that are smart," Burton said.

"Scott did research and made a decision based on what he believed was the right thing to do to win the race. You can call that gambling ... but to me gambling is doing something where you have no idea what the end result's going to be.

"That's not Scott's personality, that's not my personality.

"Scott and I are very conservative. Our gambling is a different level than others.

"If we'd put four tires on, I'd have been really nervous, because we were never good on new tires.

"I thought we were going to put two on. But to be perfectly honest we hadn't had done two all night, so who knows what would have happened.

"Silly as that sounds, doing nothing may have been the least gamble of all.

"We want clean air. But a slow car in clean air is still not going to win. The reason we won this race is because Scott got the car fast.

"And it wasn't just a 10-lap dash to the end. It was quite a bit of racing."

■ Jimmie Johnson, rarely a man to show his emotions, was hot at the end of Saturday's race at not being able to take advantage of what looked like a great opportunity to break open the Chase.

"We had to take a lot of chances … and I don't like putting myself in that situation," Johnson said.

"Almost lost the car at times.

"That frustration of being on pins and needles -- trying to run as hard as you can, but watching positions slip … all just keeps adding up.

"The last third of the race it was like that. So I've got a good hour of being upset in me. May take a while to get it out of my system."

■ Jeff Burton's winning gambit? "It might have been a gamble … but I'm not sure it was that big a risk," Johnson said.

"We took fuel only earlier in the race.

"If your stuff is working right, and you're on, you know.

"It was less risk than it looked. It wasn't like Atlanta, where we didn't take tires and you really needed them.

"Jeff had plenty of speed, took off and ran away from us."

■ Jeff Gordon, Johnson's teammate, was equally upset, because the aerodynamic characteristics of this winged car are so finicky: "I'm so frustrated with that. It's unbelievable how good my car drove out in front. It was on rails.

"It was like having the best car … and then like having the worst car when I was five or six cars back.

"That is just going to come down to track position, and Jeff Burton and his guys played a great race.

"If I could have gotten out front, I would have won the race -- I mean, anybody who gets out front is going to win the race. It's ridiculous."

Gordon has been, at times, one of the more outspoken drivers about the problems of the winged car. "But I'm exhausted talking about it.

"We just go work as a team and make the cars the best we can. Don't get in the wall …and have a car up front and able to make that pit road call like Jeff made….

"That's all you can do because nobody (at NASCAR) seems to want to help it.