BROOKLYN, Mich. -- For Jeff Gordon and Kasey Kahne, Bristol can't come soon enough. That's because both found trouble early in the 3M Performance 400 at Michigan International Speedway and both fell three spots in the point standings to ninth and 11th, respectively.

“

I don't want to be where we are in the points right now, but in some ways, this is an easier position to be in because now we just go out there and run hard every weekend and we can take chances and do things that can maybe get us that win.

”

JEFF GORDON

Gordon was the first to go when on Lap 90 he was on the left side of a three-wide sandwich with teammate Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart that saw the No. 24 bounce off of Johnson's No. 48.

Johnson cut a tire immediately and was able to drive safely onto pit road; Gordon wasn't as fortunate. On Lap 98 his tire finally gave, sending him hard into the Turn 2 wall (watch video). After pulling into the garage, Gordon wasn't as upset about the crash as he was for being in the middle of the pack.

"The first thing that happened was we just had a bad pit stop that put us back there, and we shouldn't have been back there to begin with," Gordon said, referring to his stop on Lap 86 when he entered the pits fourth and left 15th. "We finally had a great car. It's pretty disappointing that got us back there to begin with.

"We were three-wide and I came off of [Turn] 4 and my spotter at the last second said, 'Two cars outside,' and it was too late. It looked like Tony came off the wall and touched Jimmie a little bit and Jimmie came down and there was just no room to move there because we were all so tight coming off there."

After some repairs, Gordon was back on the track by Lap 159 but lasted just 16 more laps before the team called it a day and finished 42nd.

Surprisingly, Gordon found the silver lining after ending the day with a DNF.

"I'm relieved because we've been going every week going, 'Well we can't take to big of a risk but we've got to push hard enough,'" Gordon said. "Now we just don't worry about anything. We can just drive as hard as we can, do anything we possibly can, and just go all out and that's all we can do and we'll see where we end up."

Where Gordon is now is ninth, just 82 points in front of 13th-place Clint Bowyer and 14th-place David Ragan. Bowyer and Ragan both have 2,709 points but Bowyer gets the advantage due to his victory at Richmond. The focus for Gordon is now to be aggressive and try to get that first win for the 2008 season. (Continued)