Burton, Kyle Busch take big hits in Chase race

Resurgent Jeff Burton ran into a speed bump Sunday on the way to a hoped-for spot in NASCAR's Chase for the Nextel Cup championship.

Burton's engine failed just 17 laps into the GFS Marketplace 400, relegating the Richard Childress Racing driver to a 42nd-place finish and bumping him from fourth to ninth in the season standings.

With only three races left to lock up one of the 10 spots in the 10-race Chase, that was a big blow for Burton and the RCR team. But the driver tried to cheer up his team and keep a positive attitude.

"I just wanted to remind everybody that this is a good race team and this happens to everybody," said Burton, who started from the pole. "Today was our turn, and we're not going to get down about this. This is nobody's fault. We've got great race cars, but we break engines and mess up from time to time.

"We won't use this as an excuse. We have three races to get our business done, and we're going to go get it done."

Another driver who had a really bad day in the points was Kyle Busch, who completed only 132 of the 200 race laps and wound up 39th after tagging the wall and having a blown tire send him into the wall two laps later.

It dropped him from fifth to a precarious seventh in the points.

"Typical Michigan luck," said Busch, last year's top rookie. "It's a tough break for our team. They worked their hearts out. We'll just have to go to Bristol [Saturday night] and see what we can do there."

Only series leader Jimmie Johnson, runner-up Kenseth and third-place Kevin Harvick -- Burton's teammate -- have all but sewn up spots in the Chase. The top two need only to start the next three races to make it, no matter their results, and Harvick is 78 points ahead of fourth-place Mark Martin.

Martin, defending series champion Tony Stewart, four-time champion Jeff Gordon, Busch, rookie Denny Hamlin, Burton and Dale Earnhardt Jr. are all bunched within 89 points, with 11th-place Kasey Kahne only 49 points out of 10th.

Kahne, who fell into a slump after winning the June race at Michigan, finished fourth Sunday but gained only five points on Earnhardt, who finished sixth.

"That's the way it's going to be," Kahne said. "It's going to be tough to get back in [the top 10]. But, if we do our job, hopefully, it will happen. You just never know in racing. It's an up-and-down sport."

-- The Associated Press