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Kevin Harvick, driving the No. 29 car, won from the pole Sunday at the New Hampshire International Speedway, taking over the points lead.

It was yet another heartbreaking blow for Johnson, who led the standings for 22 weeks this year only to see his season fall apart with the Nextel Cup on the line. Although he has nine weeks to race back into contention, he knows how difficult it will be.

“Right now it looks like things are out of our control to get back in this thing right now,” said Johnson, 139 points out of the lead. “I can only judge on how guys are running today, and all the Chase guys are running up front.

“I hope I eat the words I said early on when I said, ‘You can’t win the championship here in New Hampshire, but you can lose it today.”’

Indeed, the championship can be lost in the first round of the Chase, and it happened in each of the first two seasons of NASCAR’s new format.

Stewart, Ryan Newman and Jeremy Mayfield all were taken out of contention in 2004 following an early accident at this 1.058-mile oval. Then defending series champion Kurt Busch suffered the same fate last season when he was wrecked moments into the race.

So the tone was set Sunday, with Harvick establishing early that he’s the driver to beat. The other Chase contenders held their own, with everyone but Johnson and Busch finishing in the top 16.

Busch’s day went bad on the very first lap, when he cut off Jeff Green and the contact caused enough damage to his Chevrolet that he had to pit several times and dropped a lap down. A second accident 100 miles from the finish dropped him to a 38th-place finish.

Johnson, winner of the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard, had hoped to celebrate his 31st birthday with a strong run. Instead, he lost a cylinder early in the race to put his team on edge and afraid of a total engine failure. But they didn’t have to worry very long: Johnson was run into the wall shortly after when Sterling Marlin swerved to avoid hitting other cars.

The hard hit destroyed the No. 48 Chevrolet and demoralized a team that had hoped this was finally its year to win that elusive title. As crew chief Chad Knaus slumped in his seat on top of the pit box, Johnson was coming to terms with how difficult it will be to rebound.

But Gordon thinks its too early to count out his protege.

“Sometimes I think they do better when they are angry and get behind,” Gordon said.

Even if he does rebound, it will be hard for anyone to catch Harvick, who won for the third time in the past six races and second in a row.

And he proved early he’s going to run hard for this title, storming between teammate Burton and Hamlin, who wiggled to the outside in the wake of the pass.

Hamlin thought it was too early to race that hard.

“It was real risky at the time,” he said. “I was very surprised that he did that. I didn’t think he needed to do that to show how strong he was. I think he could have passed me and (Burton) in five laps fairly easy.

“But that’s the way he wanted to get to the front in a hurry.”