RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Jeff Gordon challenged his team to be almost perfect Saturday night and get him into NASCAR’s Chase for the championship. When they faltered, he did, too, and the four-time champion’s bid to win his fifth was finished early.

Unofficially, the end came just past the midpoint of the Chevrolet Rock & Roll 400 when Gordon’s Chevrolet hit the outside wall exiting the second turn on the 211th lap.

“I’m done now,” he told his team over the radio.

Officially, it came when he finished 30th, and 12th in the points race.

“It was going to be a long night no matter what,” Gordon said after the race. “I don’t think we had a car capable of getting into (contention) anyway. … The car wasn’t really that much different after I hit the wall than it was before.”

The accident, and the numerous pit stops it necessitated under caution, dropped the familiar No. 24 to 35th on the grid, and when the checkered flag finally flew, he joined Dale Earnhardt Jr. as the biggest stars left out of NASCAR’s 10-race playoff.

Earnhardt was officially eliminated last weekend in California.

Jamie McMurray later became the driver with the hardest luck in the 2-year-old format when he crashed on the 361st lap while trying to catch Ryan Newman for 10th place in the standings. Last season, McMurray missed the Chase by just 15 points.

“I don’t really know what happened,” he said after climbing from his badly damaged car. “The caution was out and I started to slow down and just got run into.”

The contact was with Tony Raines, who twice seemed to close down on McMurray’s Ford when McMurray tried to move to the inside. The second contact sent McMurray spinning into the inside wall, and he drove his car to the garage area, his night over.

McMurray started the night with a one-point lead over Newman for the final spot in the playoff, but started 32nd to Newman’s eighth and was behind once the race started.

“You have 25 other races to try to make it into this, and we just didn’t run well enough in those,” a smiling McMurray said. “I could see Ryan ahead of me all night and they told me I had to beat him, but I just couldn’t get there. It’s frustrating.”

Other drivers who went into the night with a chance to make the Chase and didn’t were Elliott Sadler, who climbed from 13th to 11th, but was still 66 points behind Newman, and pole-sitter Kevin Harvick, who finished 14th, behind Gordon and McMurray.

Gordon’s crash was the most glaring mistake he and his team made, but far from the only one, even after he said this week it would take near perfection from everyone for him to erase a 30-point deficit and pass two drivers to get to 10th in the standings.

After starting sixth, he gradually faded to 13th. Then, when the field headed for pit road just past 115 laps, he left and had to return because one of the lug nuts on his car wasn’t tight. The miscue shuffled him to 28th in the field.

For Gordon, making the Chase would have been a remarkable comeback after finishing 10 of the last 11 races outside the top 10 in points, a slide that caused him to say after a 21st-place showing last weekend that his team didn’t deserve a top-10 spot.

“Now we’ve just got to put this behind us and try to figure out what’s wrong with our race team,” Gordon said. “The bottom line is we’re way off.”

Missing the playoffs may also help expedite change on his team.

Crew chief Robbie Loomis, who was with Gordon when he won his last series championship in 2001, said this week he “probably” won’t be back next year. Loomis’ contract runs out this season, and he said he’s leaning toward doing something new.

AP-ES-09-10-05 2335EDT

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