Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway was not a race between two drivers, but instead two of NASCAR’s biggest teams. The three Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) Toyotas and the three Richard Childress Racing (RCR) Chevrolets dominated the top-10 for the majority of the afternoon, and when it came time the race was decided between them.

Tony Stewart led the most laps and looked to have the most dominant car, but his teammates and the RCR stable were not ready to throw in the towel.

All three cars from each team led at one point of the race and were serious contenders for the win. In the end, Richard Childress’ cars came home 1-2-3, thanks in part to a bit of misfortune for each of the Gibbs cars.

Denny Hamlin was the first of the JGR cars to have problems. Contact with the lapped car of Casey Mears coming to the sixth caution of the day caused some damage to the right rear quarter panel. After pitting from the lead, Hamlin was forced to come back to pit road to work on the damage. Hamlin restarted the race on lap 286 from the 15th position, mired deep in lap traffic.

Kyle Busch capitalized on his teammate’s misfortune by taking the lead once Hamlin hit pit road for a second time. However, Busch’s luck was not much better.

Last week’s winner at Atlanta went into Turn 1 on Lap 290 only to have his steering lock up. The 22-year-old spun his No. 18 M&Ms Camry coming off Turn 2, making contact with the inside retaining wall. Busch was able to stay on the track after making repairs and brought his car home in 17th spot, two laps down.

As the laps wound down, the race looked like it would come down to a battle between Stewart, Hamlin and Harvick. The three were nose-to-tail when the race restarted with just five laps to go. What appeared to be a promising day for JGR quickly went sour as Harvick and Stewart made contact, sending the No. 20 Home Depot Camry hard into the wall. The incident ended Stewart’s chances of winning, and after dominating the afternoon came home a disappointing 14th.

The problems for JGR did not end there however. Leading the field to the final Green-White-Checkered start, Hamlin had a problem with his fuel pick-up coming off Turn 2. His No. 11 Fed-Ex Camry sputtered and Burton, Harvick, Bowyer, Greg Biffle and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were all able to get by.

"I know I could've held those guys off at the end," a disappointed Hamlin said, "but we were either out of fuel, or it was a fuel-pickup problem like we had here last year. By all of our calculations, we were good on fuel to the end, including a ‘green-white-checkered,' but we just couldn't seem to pick it all up.”

“The hard part is you bring such a good piece here and the driver did such a good job and you’re not able to capitalize on it,” J.D. Gibbs, president of JGR, said following the race. “Enough bad stuff happens on its own you just want to capitalize every chance you get. That hurts.”

The misfortunes of Joe Gibbs Racing turned out to be the break the Richard Childress Racing team needed. Running up front all day, Burton, Harvick and Bowyer were able to avoid trouble – except for the Harvick/Stewart incident – and be there when it mattered most.

Sunday’s win marked the first time in Richard Childress’ tenure as a car owner that his cars finished 1-2-3, and his first of 2008.