For Gordon, 36, the crash on the backstretch with five laps to go at Vegas was one of the hardest of his career. Feeling the aches and pains that come with a hard impact was bad enough, but dealing with his second DNF in three starts leaves the four-time Cup champion in 23rd place in the standings and 64 points out of 12th, the cutoff for qualifying for the Chase.

"I was sore on Monday, but I'm feeling better each day," Gordon said. "We've had competitive cars at each race this year, we just don't have the finishes to show for it. We'll hopefully rebound with another strong performance -- coupled with a great finish -- this weekend."

It has been only marginally better for his protege. Johnson was second at Fontana, but finishes of 27th at Daytona and 29th at Las Vegas have the defending series champ 14th in the standings.

Johnson, 32, and his team will use the frustrations from Las Vegas to motivate them toward success in Atlanta.

"It was definitely a disappointment, but no one is down about it," Johnson said. "It just makes us that much more determined. (The team) won't stop until they figure out what was going on with the car. Sometimes you can learn a lot more from overcoming setbacks than you do from your successes. We'll get it figured out. One thing this team doesn't do is give up."

The schedule calls for night qualifying Friday and the race to be run entirely during the daylight hours, which means the crew chiefs will be working overtime trying to find the right balance with the temperamental new chassis.

"It's a unique situation at Atlanta," Johnson said. "I don't know of any other track where we qualify at night and then run the entire race during the day. Chad (Knaus) and the engineers have to make their best guess on what the track's going to do. We've qualified well there in the past, so I'm confident we can do the same this weekend."

It's no surprise that after four wins Gordon enjoys racing at Atlanta. He liked the original layout at AMS -- which was reconstructed from a traditional oval into a tri-oval in 1997 -- but three of his wins have come since 1998.