BRISTOL, Tenn. — Denny Hamlin was right where he needed to be, in front of the field on the green- white-checkered flag restart. But when the young Virginian hit the gas, the Toyota sputtered and puked, and that allowed Jeff Burton the room he needed to drive away for the victory.
Hamlin was able to limp his ailing car around the track for a sixth-place finish.
“Another really frustrating day for us — I know I could have held those guys off there at the end, but we were either out of fuel or it was a fuel pickup problem like we had here last year,” Hamlin said. “By all of our calculations, we were good on fuel to the end, including a green-white-checkered, but we just couldn’t seem to pick all of it up. 
“It’s been that kind of season for us — we can’t get a break. It’s really too bad because we had a great Camry today. We led a bunch of laps, and then had to battle all the way back to have a shot at the end. Once we got it, we just couldn’t finish it off.”

• Mike Skinner’s Toyota Camry became a flamethrower on lap 292.
“I didn’t think it was a big deal at all,” Skinner said. “My spotter told me that there was a wreck off turn two... I checked up... and I just bumped into the back of — I think it was the 78 (Joe Nemechek).
“The bump was barely a hit. It shocked me when I looked up and saw fire behind the car, and I said, ‘What the heck is going on here?’ I thought the Red Bull Toyota was fine, but apparently it broke an oil fitting or something and got on the header and it was just blowing fire out from underneath the car. I was just going to drive it back to the pits and have the guys put it out and fix whatever was wrong with it and get back out there.”

• Kyle Busch finished 17th, but he retained the lead in the Sprint Cup standings. He leads Greg Biffle by 30 points after five races.
Busch spun out while leading the race on lap 292.
“We had a great car — we had a car that could have won the race and we blew a seal out of a power steering pump,” said Busch’s crew chief, Steve Addington. “We have to figure out what’s going on here.
“That’s two in a row — the 11 (Denny Hamlin) car had problems last week and then we had problems this week.”

• David Gilliland finished ninth for Yates Racing, which is quite an accomplishment for the team with little sponsorship.
The team is owned by Doug Yates, who took over the team when his father, Robert, retired from racing at the end of last season.
“This is a big confidence booster for everyone at Yates Racing,” Gilliland said. “This is just what we needed to try and bring sponsorship in to both of our race teams. Travis Kvapil (his teammate) showed the potential he and his team have with the way they finished at Las Vegas and we did the same today. This is one of our last races for freecreditreport.com, so we need sponsorship, and a run like we had today can only help.”

• Dario Franchitti saw the unique high-banked, half-mile concrete oval for the first time when he walked into the track on Friday morning and was amazed.
“Our first thing that we’ve got to do is get the car so it’s handling right,” Franchitti said. “Right now, we’ve got a big problem with the car snapping loose on entry through mid-corner, so we’ve got to get that fixed and then they can start working on what I have to do a bit more. It’s an exciting place, put it that way.
“I think Bristol stands alone. Nowhere is like Bristol. The closest thing that I’ve ever come to it was when I was racing an Indy car at Richmond or Iowa. The sensation of speed, but the thing is here you’ve got the sensation of speed but you don’t have the grip, so it makes it pretty interesting.” 

• Dale Earnhardt, Jr. continued his outstanding start to the 2008 season with a fifth-place finish on Sunday. He was once again the highest finishing driver from Hendrick Motorsports — an honor he’s held in four of the first five races this season.
“Well, we need to start the race a little bit better than we did,” Earnhardt said. “We worked really hard today. I am pretty proud of my team. We had a pretty good car yesterday. To start where we did, work as hard as we did, to not get tires there at the end to try and win the race, I am a little disappointed. I have to give it to Tony, Jr. (Eury) and the guys for working so hard and dialing this car in. I give those guys a lot of credit. They built me a good race car and I am real proud to drive it.”

• Aric Almirola took over the No. 8 Chevrolet for DEI for the first time this season as Mark Martin took the first of his scheduled race weekends off. Almirola finished eighth in his first Bristol start.
“That’s where we should run,” he said. “I’ve been telling all these guys on this crew for so long now throughout my career, whether I was at Joe Gibbs Racing or last year when I first got part of the merger, I tried too hard to run all the laps and learn as much as I could. Coming into this year, I’ve taken a different approach and I’ve got my elbows up and I’m going to go out there and race with these guys. The guys on this team deserve it. They build great race cars. It makes it very possible for me to go out there and do my job.”