Gordon

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- For the first time in three years, Jeff Gordon didn't lead a lap in the Daytona 500.

He never challenged the cars in the front, either, finishing 12th in Sunday's rain-shortened race. A two-time 500 champion, Gordon hasn't finished in the top five since his 1999 victory.

"We had a fast race car, and the longer we ran, the better we were," Gordon said. "I made a move, it didn't work out and I fell back to 12th."

Gordon was hoping to move up to help teammate and protege Jimmie Johnson, who was trying to fend off eventual winner Michael Waltrip. But Waltrip took the lead, and Johnson fell back to third in the race shortened to 109 laps by rain.

Of course, Gordon fell even further behind.

"I tried to make a move to get up to Jimmie Johnson so we could push one another, but guys didn't want to go with me," Gordon said. "But you don't expect them to."

At least his finish was better than the past two years, when he was 30th and 34th.

Surprise, surprise

	Wallace

For the second straight year, a part-time team owned by James Finch put a car in the top 10.

Mike Wallace came home ninth Sunday, a year after Geoffrey Bodine finished third.

"You've got the best 43 teams in the world here and the best 43 drivers in the world, and we finished ahead of 34 of them," Wallace said.

The run capped a solid week by Wallace, who doesn't have a full-time ride. He was sixth in the truck race Friday, then finished fourth in the Busch Series Koolerz 300 Saturday.

"This week has been one of the few times I've ever been to Speed Weeks when everything went right," Wallace said. "I haven't torn up anything I drove."

His finish could've been much better, though.

"James told me if I won the Daytona 500, he wanted the trophy and I could have all the money," Wallace said.

Nice recovery

	Sprague

Jack Sprague was the top rookie -- 14th in his first Daytona 500.

It was quite a difference from when he helped cause a four-car wreck in the week's first drafting practice. Several drivers criticized Sprague, saying he made a rookie mistake.

The three-time truck series champion came back strong Sunday, staying out of trouble to post the best Winston Cup finish of his career.

"I was last three or four times. I was in the top 15 three or four times," Sprague said. "It just so happened when the rain decided to sock us in, I was 14th."

He wasn't in the mood to discuss the practice crash, though.

"I'm not going to talk about it anymore," Sprague said, before adding: "I could have stopped the situation from happening, but I didn't start it. But I learned a lot through that whole ordeal, how some of these guys race."

Since rookies carry a yellow sticker on the back bumpers of their cars, other drivers can easily spot them. That was hindrance for Sprague finding a drafting partner.

"Nobody wants to help the dude with the yellow stripe," he said. "These guys have been through it before. I'm going to go through it. That's cool, because I'm going to put somebody else through it later."

Busch ratings
Fox's telecast of Saturday's Busch Series race had an overnight rating of 3.6, the highest mark in five years for the main preliminary to the Daytona 500.

The overnight rating -- which measures the country's largest markets, covering about 70 percent of the United States -- also was 24 percent higher than in 2001, the last time Fox carried the event.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Koolerz 300 over fellow Winston Cup star Matt Kenseth, and they were two of seven drivers from NASCAR's top series.

In 1998, the race had a 3.7 overnight rating on CBS.