Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran strong at his home track, finishing fourth in the Bank of America 500. (Photo: Getty Images/Chris Trotman) » More Photos

JUNIOR JAMS Dale Earnhardt, Jr. had an excellent fourth-place finish Saturday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway, the track closest to his home in Mooresville, N.C. But after the race, all he wanted to talk about was the job done by points Jeff Burton, who finished one spot in front of him. "I was real happy with the night," Earnhardt said. "We got to lead some and got to run good in front of my family and a lot of the fans we have here in this area. So it was a good night for us. We didn't gain on the new 'ice man,' Jeff Burton, but you can't break him. He's just there every week doing a great job. But he's been doing it for years. It ain't like we're trying to race against a rookie here. This guy knows how to win championships. He's got an idea of what it takes. We're doing what we need to do. Jeff (Burton) is smart, he has been at this for years, so gaining on him is going to be tough."

UNHAPPY CAMPER Matt Kenseth, the points leader at the end of NASCAR's regular season, had another discouraging effort Saturday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway, where he finished 14th in the Bank of America 500. "We just got lucky, a lot of people had trouble, that's the only reason (for finishing that high)," said an obviously disgusted Kenseth, the 2003 series champion. "We'd be kidding ourselves thinking we can win a championship operating like we did tonight. We've got some work to do. Hopefully we can get it rolling again. We just had problems with the car right from the get-go and had problems really all night; everybody did. ...I don't know what's wrong. We ran good enough to probably run 10th tonight if we didn't have any problems, but you know it's not good enough to win a championship. All of the guys in the Chase were in the top four tonight and (Jeff) Gordon was running up there before he blew up. We've got to do a lot better than this."

FIVE TAKES A DIVE Jeff Gordon's hope for a fifth NASCAR Nextel Cup title came to an abrupt end on Lap 303 of the 334-lap Bank of America 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. For the second time in three races, Gordon suffered a fluke late-race engine failure, this time falling to 10th in points. He was running fourth when his motor let go with no warning. "It is unfortunate," Gordon said. "We pride ourselves on our engine department. I would put them up against anybody out there. All we care about is going out there and getting the best performance that we can. But we've got to finish. And it just hasn't been in the cards for us these last three races and we've had some major problems that have taken us out of it. Maybe we can figure out some of these things that are happening and take that into next season and make improvements. But we can't ask for the cars to be driving much better than they are. The guys have done an awesome job and it's unfortunate that happened tonight."