Another opportunity lost for Gibbs despite top-10s

CONCORD, N.C. -- On Sunday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway, Joe Gibbs Racing put three cars in the top nine and still walked away disappointed.

Well, not disappointed, exactly, but with a definite feeling of a missed opportunity.

Lap-by-Lap

Casey Mears used fuel to his advantage and stayed out while Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin had to come in and top off. Follow every move in Mears' Coca-Cola 600 victory.

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Gibbs' lead driver, Tony Stewart, had NASCAR's longest race in the bag until he had to come to pit road with seven laps remaining for 1.1 seconds of fuel. He gave up the lead, fell to eighth place and dug back to sixth when the checkered flag fell...on Casey Mears (watch video).

"It wasn't that wild to me," Stewart grumped. "We just had to pit for gas and ended up outside the top five."

Stewart led twice for 55 laps, 54 of them coming from lap 339-392 when he went to pit road.

J.J. Yeley, who has been told that he "controls his own destiny" regarding his ride in the No. 18 Interstate Batteries Chevrolet, came through with a second-place finish, and Denny Hamlin wound up ninth despite several adventures with his FedEx Monte Carlo.

Stewart's crew chief Greg Zipadelli, as he has many times this season, was caught between a rock and a hard place on his driver's sixth-place finish.

"We were just a little bit off on fuel mileage," he said. "I didn't think we could make it. We were two and a half laps short. That's the problem?you run so fast and lead all those laps and you get the worst fuel mileage. That's just part of racing."

Stewart was the best of the cars that had to stop for fuel at the finish, beating Dale Earnhardt Jr. by more than a second. But that was little consolation to the two-time champion or his crew chief.

"If we didn't have an opportunity to win it, then I would have said that sixth place and leading laps was awesome," Zipadelli said. "But sitting where we are now, it seems like everything is stacked against us. There's probably four or five races we could have won easily this year and things just didn't go our way.

"This team's been through it before and if we continue to run as well as we do, we'll be there at the end of the year and hopefully get our wins when we need them the most."

Yeley was happy with second, but was really looking to be the driver who earned his first career victory on Sunday night, not Mears (watch video). (Continued)