Gordon rues missed opportunity

The four-time Sprint Cup champion made an incredible comeback after he clipped the wall twice in the first ten laps and dropped a lap down.

However, during the penultimate caution and while leading the race, he pitted for four tyres and fuel while the other top runners stayed out.

Gordon dropped to seventh and his car was never as good in traffic as in clean air while he was leading. He had to pit again with the leaders on the last caution but his crew chief called for four new tyres, while others went for two, or none - as with eventual winner Jeff Burton.

"The only way you were going to win the race was to be the first car out (of the pits) on two tyres," Gordon said. "We were out of sequence when we got the lead and if it had stayed green, I think we were pretty good. I don't know how the fuel mileage would have worked out, but we didn't need the caution to fall when it did.

"Those other guys had quite a bit fresher tyres, we had to come in. My car wasn't good on two tyres when we put them on and I knew we weren't going to be out first because the guys ahead of us were going to come out."

"So I think (crew chief) Steve Letarte made a great call and the only thing that messed me up were some lapped cars in traffic."

Gordon was frustrated about how big a difference it made for him to have clean air, relative to being behind other cars. He believes he could have definitely won, had he been able to come out of the pits in front following the last couple of cautions.

"If I could have got out front, I would have won," he said. "I mean, anybody who gets out front is going to win the race. It's ridiculous."

"I'm so frustrated with that. It's unbelievable how good my car drove out in front, it was on rails. It was like having the best car, and then like having the worst car when I was five or six cars back.

"That's just going to come down to track position and I think Jeff Burton and those guys played a great race. They had a great car and they won the race. Hats off to them. But I was really frustrated with that."

Despite leading the race with the right side of his car damaged as a result of his contact with the wall early on, Gordon believes he could have run even better had he avoided those two incidents at the beginning of the race.

"The first time I got it kind of soft and I thought all right, we're going to be okay," Gordon said.

"Then the car wasn't great and the No.88 got underneath me and just the air from him being underneath me just made the whole car take off. It probably didn't help that we had the damage already, so that just killed our night.

"I know we came back with a really nice finish but it would have been so much better if we hadn't had that damage."

Gordon maintained eighth place in the Chase standings following Saturday's race, although he is already 245 points behind teammate Jimmie Johnson.