DOVER, Del. -- Jeff Gordon emerged from his grime-smeared Chevy Impala parked on Dover International Speedway's pit road red-faced, soaked with sweat and looking as if he'd just gone 15 rounds with Mike Tyson in the heavyweight champion's prime.

“

It can always be worse -- you have to remind yourself of that -- but right now I don't want to remind myself of that. I will [Monday] or the next day, but right now I'm just disappointed.

”

-- JEFF GORDON

He'd cut his Chase-opening 15th-place finish at New Hampshire last weekend more than in half, with a sixth-place behind race-winning Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson and three other Chase contenders. But despite that, his point deficit to championship leader Mark Martin grew 20 points to 122 behind, despite picking up two spots, to eighth.

So nearly half an hour later, when he emerged in street clothes from his hauler looking worlds more refreshed -- his mood was definitely not much better than if Tyson had knocked him out a couple times in those 15 rounds.

"I'm really disappointed," Gordon said. "I feel like we had a second-place car and when you have a second-place car you've got to finish second or contend for the win."

His openly calm, but pointedly downcast demeanor resulted from an air gun malfunction on a pit stop with less than 80 laps to go, which came after a 100-lap stretch in which he'd run second to Johnson, who led the race's final 225 laps.

When the race's seventh of nine cautions flew at Lap 326, Gordon pitted running second to Johnson. After the air gun failed, Gordon restarted the race at Lap 329 running seventh, and quickly fell back to eighth. Fifteen laps later, when the next caution flew, he pitted again for four tires and was running 12th when the race restarted.

But he knew his chance to win -- if it ever existed -- had evaporated at Lap 327.

"The No. 48 [Johnson] was in a league of their own but I felt like we were second best," Gordon said. "We had a problem with a gun on pit road and I don't know what you do about that -- but we'll try to fix it for the next time. It's just nice to run good."

But running back in traffic had its limits, and Gordon could get no better than sixth, behind Chase contenders Juan Montoya and Kurt Busch, in the race's final run. To say passing was difficult was an understatement.

"I already knew that earlier in the race," Gordon said. "It was very challenging. It was like driving a different race car when you get fifth or sixth on back. We had already made adjustments to the car to be up front like we had been. You take that risk when you adjust the car.

Follow the Chase with news and analysis from the track by NASCAR.COM's insiders.

• Full coverage

"We were trying to make it better and compete with the No. 48 and then you get behind, I think we were seventh, eighth or ninth or something like that [before the last stop]. We were just a sitting duck. We couldn't go anywhere."

Gordon's seeking his fifth Cup title but, he pointedly reminds anyone who asks, his first in the current Chase format. He sees this championship shaping up as an all-Hendrick party, but when he speaks of it, it's as if that isn't his team.

"I think a lot of people thought that Hendrick could be the team to beat and right now they certainly are -- we're racing them plus other guys [and] we've got work to do, that's part one," Gordon said. "We saw Mark [Martin] win and finish second here and he's tough. Jimmie [Johnson] dominated [Sunday] and finished fourth last week."

And as tough a row as he and his team have to hoe, and as indefinable as the solution to something as vague as luck can be, he's optimistic heading to Kansas next weekend.

"It certainly was an improvement over last week," Gordon said. "It can always be worse -- you have to remind yourself of that -- but right now I don't want to remind myself of that. I will [Monday] or the next day, but right now I'm just disappointed.

"We just can't get things to go our way. That's what it takes to win a championship. We're certainly not out of it yet and we're going to keep fighting hard like we did [Sunday] and like we did last week. We're eighth in points and we'll just keep on going. I think the next two tracks are really good tracks for us so I'm looking forward to those."