Gamble sees Jr climb to a 6th place finish

When the caution came out with 19 laps to go, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. sat in 30th place on the track, looking to end the day there with leader Jimmie Johnson running away from the field. Johnson and the leaders came in for four tires, others came in for two tires, while Kyle Busch (7th), Jr. (6th), Ryan Newman (15th) and Joe Nemechek (24th) stayed out.
Kyle Busch led on the restart, with Jr in 2nd, where the two got away from a crazy field - where eventual 2nd place finisher Matt Kenseth led Johnson and the other four-tire cars around the two tire stoppers, which included Denny Hamlin and Clint Bowyer. On lap 150, Jr. passed Busch for the lead going into turn 1, but Johnson was able to get by Busch as well, and passed Jr in turn 4 of the same lap. So while Jr led, he would not get any bonus points for leading.
Jr gave little difficulty to Kenseth, Harvick (3rd), Bowyer (4th) or Martin (5th), but was able to hold off Busch (7th), Carl Edwards (8th), Tony Stewart (9th) and Kurt Busch (10th) for the last 6-7 laps until several incidents happened on the white flag lap, which saw Robby Gordon and Greg Biffle spin, saw Tony Raines (11th place finisher) involved, and saw Kasey Kahne clip Stewart hard into the wall. Biffle finished 33rd, Gordon 35th and Kahne 36th. This kept Biffle in 12th in the points, dropped Kahne from 7th to 11th in the points.
Jr. improved one spot to 10th in the points, some 512 behind leader Johnson, but is only 26 points out of Denny Hamlin in 7th, 15 behind Jeff Gordon in 8th, and only 3 behind Stewart in 9th, but also improves to 37 points ahead of 11th place, in the last transfer spot in the Chase with 5 races to go: Watkins Glen, Michigan, Bristol, California and Richmond. Jr is now 115 up on 12th place Biffle, and only 100 points back of 6th place Martin, and 121 back of 4th place, which sees Harvick tied with Kyle Busch, some 391 points back of the lead.

Today's result perhaps steals back some points lost in New Hampshire three weeks ago, where a strong car suffered a blown engine en route to a last place finish. Jr was 3rd in points before that race, and fell four spots each of the two prior races on the heels of consecutive last place finishes. Today goes to show that it is far easier to lose points quickly than to gain them back.

The other story of the day was the comeback by #24, Jeff Gordon, who fell almost 4 laps off the pace in the first 15 laps, and through three lucky dog passes (and the rest of the field cooperating by staying on the lead lap) was able to get back on the lead lap, and finish a respectable 16th, far better than the 40th place he looked doomed to finish.