Kasey Kahne heads to the garage, his championship hopes dashed, after an on-track altercation with Tony Stewart at Dover. (Photo: Getty Images/Jonathan Ferrey)

Stewart felt terrible about the incident. "Wrecking is one thing, but when you take out somebody that's in the chase, you've screwed up a whole team's year by one race," he said. "And of all people, it's one of my good friends."

Busch, who wrecked out early at New Hampshire, lost the engine this time around, making only 110 laps and finishing 40th. The two terrible finishes in a row led Busch to pronounce, "We're done."

"We had one of the best cars out there," he rued. "We drove from about 20th up to third there that one run, and we were catching the leaders.

"The Hendrick Motorsports engine department has always been very very strong. Today we must have had a problem in the top end. Nothing came out the bottom. We must have broken a valve."

Busch is 10th in the playoff standings, 224 off the pace.

Speedway Motorsports chairman Bruton Smith hinted in April that he wants a second date for his Las Vegas track, and he hinted that Dover might be a target. Dover Motorsports, like SMI, is a publicly-traded company.

Smith wondered that Dover, with 140,000 seats, rarely sells out. A quick look around at National Anthem time Sunday showed a suprising number of empty seats, especially in the second and third turns -- perhaps 15,000 aluminum backs altogether.

There has been no more heard of any maneuvers Smith might be making to acquire a date from any other track.

Goodyear seemed to have trouble with its right-side tires, which company officials said were of the same set that ran here without much trouble in June. Teams, however, always are changing their set-ups, so Goodyear frequently is shooting at a moving target.

Several teams noted wear to the cords on their right-sides, especially the high-stress right-fronts. Notable among them were Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Scott Riggs.

Goodyear representative Carole Swartz did not rule out a second look at the right-side tires before next June's race here. "The 8 car [Earnhardt] was running high, where the track is pretty green," she said. "The 10 car [Riggs] just wore through.

"Handling was the key. The cars that handled well didn't have tire problems. The cars that didn't handle in some fashion did show tire wear."

Richard Childress Racing plans to run recently acquired youngster Timothy Peters in a third Busch car at three races this fall, at Charlotte, Memphis and Homestead. He'll also run an RCR car in the ARCA race at Talladega.

Peters recently was hired away from Bobby Hamilton Racing after Dodge terminated its development agreement with Peters.