FanHouse ChaseForTheNextelCup

Don't expect the the No. 20 Home Depot driver to be opening up and talking candidly with the media a whole lot any time soon.

That is, though, unless he wants to start talking about the 2008 Sprint Cup campaign.

Tony Stewart finished 30th Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway after some motor troubles during the middle section of the race. He lost oil pressure and brought the car to pit road and lost five laps in the process.

After his dismal day at Atlanta, Stewart will have three races to make up the 322 point deficit at Texas, Phoenix and Atlanta.

Stewart joined a growing list of drivers who can count themselves out of the 2007 championship. Drivers that seem to still have a legitimate shot (some more than others) include Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Clint Bowyer and potentially Kyle Busch.

Carl Edwards in 5th and down 261 points teeters on the very edge of a possible championship run -- but it would have to come with improbable luck.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. may have lost what was his best remaining chance at a Nextel Cup race victory Sunday after blowing his engine with 52 laps to go in the UAW-Ford 500.

But his teammate Martin Truex Jr. and engine program partner Jeff Burton might have lost so much more.

The Dale Earnhardt Inc.-Richard Childress Racing engine partnership had seven cars on track Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway and only two of them finished under full power. Three of them actually finished.

Burton lost his motor off of turn four on lap 92 and 21 laps later Truex blew his coming into the tri-oval.

Burton knows that he can pretty much stick a fork in his title chances.

"Obviously, this about wraps it up for us for the championship. We will keep fighting," Burton said. "We will go next week and strap our boots on and go fight and see what we can make out of it."

Truex now finds himself 300 points out of first in tenth while Burton sits further back -- in 12th with a 331 point deficit.

Kevin Harvick also started engine trouble late in the event. With 44 laps to go, Harvick was sitting on pit road with the hood up, but his crew could do nothing to fixed what ailed his Chevrolet engine. He would finish on seven cylinders in 20th place, some 202 points behind race-winner and point leader Jeff Gordon.

New DEI'er Aric Almirola also finished with a DNF because of his engine.

Only Clint Bowyer and Paul Menard would finish without a hitch in the engine.

Jeff Gordon's 80th victory didn't look like it would happen Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway with 30 laps to go. It didn't even seem possible with 10 laps to go.

But a few aggressive moves and a bunch of luck later, Gordon found himself leading just one lap in the UAW-Ford 500. That lap, though, was the only one that mattered.

After a dismal qualifying run on Saturday due to the team focusing on setting up the car for race trim, Gordon began the day in 34th and would fall back to as low as 39th at some points. The move to the back was intentional, as he was joined by teammates Jimmie Johnson and Casey Mears for much of the day and a handful of other drivers competing in the Chase for the Nextel Cup – all of them hoping to avoid the notorious Talladega "Big One".

That, and a penalty for running over an air hose, kept the four-time champion out of the largest pile-up of the day that involved ten cars including Chase contenders Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch with 44 laps to go.

One-fourth of the Chase for the Nextel Cup population had a good day (and night!) at Kansas Speedway on Sunday.

The remaining three-fourths would have gladly taken Dorothy's trip to Oz instead of their 210 travels around the 1.5 mile circuit Sunday.

The disparity was pretty clean cut as Jimmie Johnson left with the point lead and Denny Hamlin left with a 248 point deficit in twelfth.

In between, Jeff Gordon again averted disaster by missing wrecks -- again -- and used an impressive drive in the last 30 laps to take to a fifth-place finish. Clint Bowyer now sits third in the standings after getting to the finish line first when Greg Biffle ran out of gas finishing 2nd.

Tony Stewart was a hothead after cutting a tire and then getting booted by Kurt Busch while trying to find pit road. That incident collected Carl Edwards, leaving him with his 2nd DNF in as many days at Kansas. Busch ended with a decent day in 11th that should have been oh-so-much better with the way his car handled before the second rain delay.

Kevin Harvick followed the same path as Busch and wound up sixth.

Others walking away disappointed from the crazy race included Matt Kenseth, Martin Truex Jr. and Kyle Busch who all got the wrong end of crashes.