Rudd sorry to miss out on top ten

Stewart fractured his right shoulder after two accidents in successive races at Lowe's Motor Speedway last weekend, but took the start at Dover despite the injury so that any points Rudd scored for the drivers' championship would go to Stewart.

At the first caution period Stewart was helped from the car to make way for Rudd and was up to 21st by the 150th lap. However, Rudd later went a lap down because he had to take a penalty for being caught speeding in the pitlane. He eventually finished 25th.

"I knew there was a reason I quit this sport," Rudd said after his first race since Homestead last November.

"I wasn't speeding.  Somebody up there's got something against me.  I don't know what it is.  We came down the pit road and left with the traffic and I'm the only guy that gets called back in for speeding, so that's real disappointing.

"We missed the set-up on the car.  I didn't quite know what to ask for and late in the race Zippy [Greg Zipadelli, crew chief] started playing with the car a little bit and he got it much, much better.  I think we were probably a seventh, eighth, 10th, 12th place car at the worst, but ended up way back.  The extra lap really killed us.

"We had a top-10 finish.  We just couldn't get it.  You know, I was running with the No. 26 [eventual runner-up Jamie McMurray] most of the race, came in, pitted with him and left with him and we got caught speeding and he didn't."

Stewart said it was hard work to get through those first 39 laps at the demanding one-mile oval, but he now hopes to complete all of next week's 500-mile race himself at the less-physical Pocono track.

"This was one of those days that we had to take what we could get," Stewart said. " It wasn't what we wanted by any means, but you don't ever want to get out of the car either.  I think Ricky did a great job.

"I was sore from lap one until I got out.  When you have an injury, you're sore to start with.  You can't take pain medication to mask it.  I don't know why all of the sudden everybody's just now figuring that out.  Our plan was to get out during the first available caution."