updated 8:00 p.m. ET Sept. 16, 2007

LOUDON, N.H. - Kurt Busch had one of those days that a driver would just as soon forget.

After making a charge over the last two months just to get into the 12-man field for NASCAR’s Chase for the Nextel Cup championship, Busch started third in Sunday’s 43-car field at New Hampshire International Speedway and ran with the leaders in the early going.

Runaway winner Clint Bowyer said after the race that Busch was the only driver that seemed able to hang with him most of the day.

But Busch’s No. 2 Penske Racing Dodge slowed on lap 122 with what the team initially thought was a dropped cylinder. The rest of the race was a blur for the 2004 series champion, who wound up hanging on for a 25th-place finish that left him last in the Chase standings, 102 points behind co-leaders Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon with nine races remaining.

“We had a strong car there in the beginning and then had a motor problem,” Busch said. “A later diagnosis left us with a problem with our carburetor. It left us without the power that we needed.

“It’s kind of a bummer,” said Busch, who won this race in 2004, the first of the Chase. “But we worked hard to get into this Chase and we’ll still work hard. This (race) is a big lump, but it didn’t hurt us, so we’ll see what happens.”

Junior's day
A week after being the major story as he tried and failed to make the field for the Chase, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a relatively unnoticed, 16th-place day at New Hampshire.

“We had a really good car at the beginning of the race, then we kind of outthought ourselves on the adjustments and the car just went away,” he said. “It got so loose I couldn’t hang on to it and I spun out.

“We got a lot better toward the end, but there was just too much track position to make up and not enough time. I am real proud of my guys ’cause no one on this team has given up at all.”

Sam's choice
Open-wheel star Sam Hornish Jr. came up short in his attempt to qualify for Sunday’s race, which would have been the three-time IndyCar champion’s Cup debut. Hornish is hoping to run several Cup events before the end of the season as a test to determine if he wants to make the jump to NASCAR full-time.

But Roger Penske, who owns Hornish’s cars in both series’, said the failure to race at New Hampshire is just a minor setback.

“After (Hornish) practiced, he felt pretty good,” said Penske, who fielded Dodges for Busch and Ryan Newman on Sunday. “The discussion with him was ‘don’t overdrive it in qualifying’ and he probably didn’t realize he’s going to have to overdrive it to get in. That’s part of the learning curve.

“But, we’re on our plan, we said we would run him five or six races at the end of the year. That way he can make a personal decision about what he wants to do and then we’ll make a move. The good news is we have some flexibility.”

Penske said he doesn’t know at this point which way 2006 Indy 500 winner Hornish will decide.

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“My gut feeling is we’d like to go,” Penske said. “But we’re going to look at the facts, be honest with him and be honest with the team. I think it’s too early to say.

“He practiced well, I think he had a couple good tests, and we were sure disappointed he didn’t make it. But we didn’t make the Indy 500 in ’95 and we’re still here. I told him don’t cut your wrists.”

With the IndyCar Series struggling and NASCAR prospering, Penske was asked if he might consider close down his open-wheel operation at some point.

“At the moment, there is probably more commercial opportunity in NASCAR,” he said. “But that’s not going to ever keep us out of running open-wheel cars. I think there’s cliental and fans on both sides, and I know for a fact that this year (IndyCar) made a lot of progress from the standpoint of the fans, and I think the races were good. We got some new venues, and with that it takes some time to grow. You don’t build these series’ overnight and they don’t fall apart overnight.”

Spark plugs
The track announced a crowd of 101,000, giving NHIS sellouts for each of the 26 Cup races run here since 1993. ... Every car in the field finished Sunday’s race, the first time that has happened since NASCAR mandated 43-car fields at every track in 1998. ... Bowyer joined Martin Truex Jr., Casey Mears and rookie Juan Pablo Montoya as first-time Cup winners in 2007. ... This is the fourth time in a row that this race has been won by a driver in the Chase field. ... Rudy Guiliani, former New York mayor and candidate for the Republican nomination for President, spoke briefly at the Sunday drivers’ meeting.

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