LOUDON, N.H. -- Nothing short of a victory would ease the pain of any NASCAR competitor that didn't make the Chase for the Sprint Cup, but Kurt Busch and Martin Truex Jr. were feeling OK Sunday evening at New Hampshire Motor Speedway after contending for good parts of the day and posting top-10 finishes in the Sylvania 300.

Busch was in the top five for nearly half of the 300-lap race and ended up sixth, his third top 10 in the last six races. Busch said his team was hoping to maintain the momentum it began last weekend at Richmond, when he finished 10th.

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We're still struggling at the end of the race keeping up with the racetrack. I don't think it's anybody's fault. We just have to work on something different, but [with] what we've been having lately, it felt good the last two weeks.

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-- KURT BUSCH

"This is the kind of run that we would chalk up to last week's experience because for the weeks before we were just trying stuff out of the box, trying to find something that would help our car," said Busch, whose Penske Racing team has struggled a lot this season with NASCAR's new car. "We still struggled towards the end to get the front end to turn, and that's our big concern.

"We're still struggling at the end of the race keeping up with the racetrack. I don't think it's anybody's fault. We just have to work on something different, but [with] what we've been having lately, it felt good the last two weeks."

Truex made his first Chase last season but like Busch could not get back into contention for this year's playoffs, despite good flashes of his former performance. Sunday, he ran in the top 10 for more than the last half of the race before circumstances knocked him into seventh.

His crew chief Kevin Manion just laughed when a bystander suggested that Truex's top finish was the result of "Modified karma" achieved Saturday when Ryan Newman started Manion's Tom Baldwin Tribute car on the pole for the Whelen Modified Tour's feature event and ran with the leaders all day before being eliminated in a late wreck while running in the top five.

"We had a bad-ass racecar today," Manion said. "It was absolutely a great day to build momentum for these last 10, getting ready for 2009. That late caution there kind of goofed us up a little bit because I thought we had a shot at a top five.

"We were pretty much by Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. and we were chasing down [Jeff Burton], so the cautions just didn't help us. But we had a top-five car for sure, today because we started way back in 17th and worked our way up to the front." (Continued)