LONG POND, Pa. -- Pocono Raceway is much too flat to be related to a rollercoaster, but that's exactly the ride the 2.5-mile triangle in the northeastern Pennsylvania mountains delivered on Sunday for several Sprint Cup competitors.

Three of the four -- Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle and Martin Truex Jr. -- all led laps but ended up with a lot less to show for their day's efforts. Jeff Gordon came into the Pocono 500 with the most scintillating record here of the quartet, but it did him little good.

Edwards, who came into the race fourth in the standings, had the best day. He'd been fastest in both Saturday practices and started sixth in his No. 99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford.

He ran inside the top 10 for nearly three-quarters of the race, despite leading only a single lap on two occasions. When the race's final caution flew, at lap 178 for Kyle Busch's spin exiting Turn 1, Edwards was heading to pit road as the race leader when the red light closing the service alley flashed on.

Pocono 500

Official Results

Pos.	Driver	Make
1.	Kasey Kahne	Dodge
2.	Brian Vickers	Toyota
3.	Denny Hamlin	Toyota
4.	Dale Earnhardt Jr.	Chevrolet
5.	Jeff Burton	Chevrolet
6.	Jimmie Johnson	Chevrolet
7.	Matt Kenseth	Ford
8.	Kurt Busch	Dodge
9.	Carl Edwards	Ford
10.	Mark Martin	Chevrolet

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A timely warning caused Edwards to swerve around the commitment cone at the head of pit road, thus avoiding a penalty for pitting when the alley was closed. But while still under caution, Edwards had a left-rear tire go flat, and after his pit service he was back to 33rd.

In 20 laps, he raced back to finish ninth and maintained his fourth position in the standings. He had little to say about his misfortune, dwelling instead on his race back to a decent finish.

"Yeah, it was not too bad," Edwards said. "We have just got to do a better job on pit road -- but we went from [33rd] to ninth. This was fun. I mean, I had a good time on that last run.

"I just wish [I had] 10 more laps or something to work on people, you know? I'm not real good at math, but that's a lot of cars. I don't know if anybody passed any more people than us [Sunday], but that's just the way it goes."

Actually, according to NASCAR's Loop Data stats Edwards made 81 green-flag passes, which was only 24th on the list of 43 starters. But he was more convinced of his team's woes on pit road.

"When you pull on pit road and whether it's my fault or someone else's fault, we lose an average of about three spots every time," Edwards said. "It's just unnecessary. We've just got to do a little better because we've got a great team. If we can put this together, we'll be great."

His crew chief, Bob Osborne, was more pointed in his remarks.

"It's frustrating," Osborne said. "Nobody's been able to pass Carl all day, and we come from 33rd to ninth on the last run. Waited one lap too long on that caution when we got the flat tire to pit -- really just waiting to see what [race winner Kasey Kahne] and [third-place Denny Hamlin] did for tires, waiting to decide whether I was going to do two or four.

"We would've fared OK, because we would've come out probably 15th or so, and obviously 15th to first is a lot more difficult group of cars to pass than 30th to 15th. But still, we had a car -- I don't know that we had a car to beat [Kahne], but we had a car to finish second, easily, so it's frustrating."

Pit road was also Biffle's undoing. He'd started his No. 16 Roush Fenway Ford 33rd, but by quarter-distance he was into the top 10. By halfway he was in the top five, where he remained a fixture virtually until he was tagged with a speeding penalty on a green-flag pit stop at Lap 165.

"I don't know what happened," Biffle said with a chuckle regarding his speeding penalty. "I guess I broke out that last box a half a mile an hour [too fast]. I guess what happened was I was right on the maximum [speed] and then I just gave it gas a millisecond before I was across the [timing] line.

"You know, it goes off the rear bumper and I had to learn that last year, when I got caught a couple times; because the timer's on the rear bumper so when your nose crosses the stripe, that doesn't count -- it's when your rear bumper crosses.

"I thought I was patient enough to know when my rear bumper crossed before I gassed it -- and I must've picked it up in the middle of the car, or something -- but it was a half a mile an hour."

Biffle said he hadn't had a speeding penalty since last season, when "we had a couple."

"You know, that happens when you're pushing the envelope, but it's unfortunate for us, because we ended up 15th," Biffle said. "I had probably a third-place car. I couldn't catch [Kahne] -- I couldn't do nothing with [Kahne] -- but I think I was a top-three car or a top-four car."

The hiccup actually cost Biffle two positions, from fifth to seventh when Hamlin and sixth-place Jimmie Johnson vaulted above him in the standings.

“

That was a lot of work to finish 17th. We couldn't get the right-rear [tire] to grip like we wanted and that hurt us.

”

MARTIN TRUEX JR.

"Well, I've just got to be frustrated with myself, you know?" Biffle said. "I took a really good car that the guys gave me, we had good pit stops and then [I made a mistake]. That's that 10 percent I'm talking about that we need to get better on.

"You know, it was my fault, but we just need to not have mistakes like that when the Chase comes around -- or we need to get in the Chase and those last 10 [races] we can't have mistakes. But I learned from it, and I won't do it again."

Gordon's problems with the new car have occurred just as often as they haven't this season. He started 38th and only briefly raced in the top 10, on two widely separated occasions.

His crew chief, Steve Letarte, engineered a strategic 14th-place finish, but Gordon lost two spots in the points, from sixth to eighth, in the process.

"This has always been a creative place for pit strategy," Letarte said. "This car, track position and the way we race now make it even more so. If you have a spectacular car like [Kahne] had, it's not that important -- and they proved it.

"But if you have average cars, like I think we had, we had to get creative on pit strategy. I think I just made a poor decision on Lap 100. We lost our track position and raced from the back the rest of the day.

"We had an opportunity [to get back up front] on fuel. The last prayer I had was fuel. We were close. We went a lap short, but we were going to try, but when that last yellow came out my job is to be the realist -- and realistically, we didn't have a car good enough to stay out.

"We had to come just get tires and take our lumps and get our cars better."

Maybe the most agonizing day belonged to New Jersey native Truex. A pit miscue resulted when his catch-can man slipped and dropped the can while the No. 1 Dale Earnhardt Inc. Chevrolet was being refueled, which is a tail end of the longest line violation. He was poised to take the lead on a green-flag pit cycle that was interrupted by a caution at Lap 28.

Despite that, Truex had battled back to fourth place by just after halfway before his car's handling fell off at the very end of the race, relegating him to a 17th-place finish that leaves him 16th in the standings, though only 56 points from 12th.

"That was a lot of work to finish 17th," Truex said. "We couldn't get the right-rear [tire] to grip like we wanted and that hurt us. We had to try some different stuff in the pits to get us some track position back.

"The guys kept fighting and I'm proud of them for that. We'll just have to go to Michigan and have a good run there."

Edwards, Biffle and Gordon are feeling like they're in the same boat.