LOUDON, N.H. -- If misery loves company, Joe Gibbs Racing's Tony Stewart had to pick up a few thousand more fans after Sunday's rain-whacked Lenox Industrial Tools 301.

Because after Stewart dominated nearly half of the event, leading 132 of its ultimate 284 laps, threatening rain clouds and the even more ominous specter of fuel strategy reared up and bit his No. 20 Toyota team.

From what appeared to be a certain first- or second-place finish, Stewart was relegated to 13th; but to Stewart's credit, as he sat in his car awaiting the race-ending call and wearing a clay-like mask of despair, he calmly addressed the situation.

“

It's just been the oddest year I've ever seen for this team. I don't know how to put it into words right now. It's just one of those years where everything that can go wrong goes wrong.

”

TONY STEWART

"I guarantee you there's a crew chief down there that they're hiding sharp objects from right now," Stewart said of his pit boss, Greg Zipadelli. "He gave me the best car I've had since Charlotte. It's just frustrating. There's not anybody that's going to tell you any different than that.

"It's just been the oddest year I've ever seen for this team. I don't know how to put it into words right now. Everybody's worked hard -- it's not for a lack of effort by anybody on this Home Depot racing team by any means."

Stewart achieved a personal milestone by crossing the 10,000-laps-led plateau in his career, but it was little consolation; same as at the Coca-Cola 600 he mentioned earlier, where a sure victory with less than five laps remaining disappeared thanks to a flat tire.

"It's just one of those years where everything that can go wrong goes wrong," Stewart said. "We've had years where we couldn't do anything wrong, too. It's part of racing."

If not for Gibbs teammate Denny Hamlin's crew chief Mike Ford and his opportunistic move that salvaged an eighth-place finish for the event's defending champion, JGR might've been in a position to pick up tens of thousands of new supporters.

When the race's sixth caution flew at Lap 273, Stewart had a couple tenths of a second lead over Jimmie Johnson. As good as Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet looked, it wasn't certain who would've prevailed in the battle of the two former New Hampshire winners.

It was here where three veins of strategy popped up. Eight cars, led by eventual race winner Kurt Busch's No. 2 Dodge, had pitted earlier within their fuel windows and now they stayed out to establish track position. Five more cars took fuel only and lined up behind Hamlin, from ninth to 13th. And everyone after Stewart in 14th took some combination of fuel and tires.

The race restarted and only two laps later, the seventh and final caution flew for a clash in Turn 3 between Chase contender Clint Bowyer and rookie Sam Hornish Jr.

That locked Hamlin into eighth and Stewart in 13th.

"We knew it was coming. If we stayed out we were going to have to pit right about this time so it was going to be a gamble," Hamlin said. "Everyone we're chasing in points is behind us anyway so congratulations to the guys that figured this rain out just right."

Ford took the situation in stride.

"You've just got to ask yourself, how many times has the best car won this year? I don't know of many," Ford said. "You've got to juggle the elements and make the best of it, and we made the best of what we had.

"You've got to play the percentages. I dang near stayed out there, figuring that the rain was pretty close. We'd have been three [laps] short of running out on fuel if we had stayed out -- but we'd have won the race. But it's risk versus reward, and we had more to lose at that point. You can't control these elements. You make the most of it and you guess -- that's what it is."

The final insult for the three-car JGR ensemble developed between the last green flag and that final caution.

Kyle Busch, the Sprint Cup leader by 103 points at the start of the race who uncharacteristically failed to get real close to running in the top 10 all day, got involved in some fender-rubbing racing with Juan Montoya.

Montoya took the final caution at the start/finish line and then took a sharp left turn into Busch's right-rear quarter panel. That spun Busch at the end of the frontstretch but he collected Montoya's No. 42 Dodge in the process.

Montoya understood what had happened well enough to address it immediately. And just as plainly, he explained his actions both before and after he was summoned to the NASCAR office trailer to receive a two-lap penalty that sent him from 25th to 32nd, the last car two laps down.

"On the [Lap 279] restart, I got around the outside of [Busch] in Turn 2 and he just went wide like I wasn't even there -- he crowded me towards the wall," Montoya said. "Down the backstraight he hit me on braking for Turn 3 like he was trying to wreck me.

"I thought we had a decent car and I don't appreciate when people race me like that. The caution came out and under caution he hit me again, and I retaliated, you know? I'm a nice guy, but I'm not an idiot."

Montoya wasn't any more uncomfortable after leaving his meeting with the officials.

"I think it's OK for what I did," Montoya said of the penalty. "He hit me under caution, and he hit me under green and I retaliated. Did I [go] a little bit too far in retaliating? Yeah."

To his credit, Busch addressed the situation -- even if he didn't really understand it.

"I have no idea," Busch said of the incident's cause. "I got a run on him earlier and I got on the outside and he kind of kept coming up a little bit. I didn't turn down into him and just barely touched his quarter panel.

"We came to that caution flag and he thought he beat me to the caution flag and I was just trying to get around the 40 car, who was in front of us there. I touched him on the door and he just turned left and spun me down the front straightaway. I don't know what his beef is."

Busch, who was in 17th when the caution flew but ended up 25th after recovering from the spin, is now just 64 points clear of second-place Jeff Burton, who finished 12th.

After the wild ending, JGR president J.D. Gibbs walked out of the sopping wet garage looking like he faced a one-mile walk to his car without an umbrella -- trying to convince himself with every step he took he'd dry out, eventually.

"It's just part of the deal, you know -- sometimes it happens," Gibbs said, the disappointment evident on his face and in his voice. "But let me tell you, you can take a gamble and you stay out and it works out -- but more often than not, it doesn't."

As bad as the mood was for at least two of his three teams, Gibbs said no special pep talks would be necessary in Sunday's aftermath. Hamlin actually picked up a spot in the points, to seventh, and even with his situation Stewart picked up two positions, to ninth.

"Really, for Denny and [Stewart's] 20 team -- they know they were good," Gibbs said. "All those guys, even with the way they ran, you had to come in and be conservative -- to know you were right.

"I think it's frustrating with Kyle, because he got spun at the very end and he had a shot to get into the top 10 -- or at least 11th or 12th when it was all said and done -- so that's frustrating."

That was definitely the case, as moments earlier Busch had exited the garage looking like he'd come from the very center of the cloud that was deluging the speedway. Earlier, he'd talked of his car problems.

"It wasn't something that was going to get fixed on the racetrack," Busch said. "We needed to go to the garage and work on it. We missed something all weekend and we pretty much knew it was going to be a dismal day, but we tried to make the most of it.

"If we would have stayed out, then we could have won the race -- we could have been where [Kurt Busch] was. I didn't feel like that was the way to win a race, just to stay out and play by the rain. We did what we did to try to pass some more cars.

"Right now we're the point leaders, but if we're not tomorrow that's OK because we're in Chase contention and that's what matters. [Sunday] was a frustrating day and all we can do is go into next week and try to run better."

That's keeping Stewart going, as well.

"The good thing is no matter what the outcome is [Sunday], we get to do it again in six more days [at Daytona] so we just do what we can," Stewart said. "We're racers and that's what you do every week. Forty-three of us start the race each week and only one guy can win."