HAMPTON, GA. ? It was a dreadful day for most of the contenders for the Nextel Cup title.

Seven of the 10 contenders in the Chase for the Championship ran into trouble and finished deep in the field Sunday in the Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, most notably Kurt Busch, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Busch, who finished sixth or better in the previous six races, said he had a gut feeling before the race that he might be due a bad result, and he was right. He blew an engine on the backstretch on lap 52 and finished 42nd.

“You feel like you’ve done everything you can to produce the results,” Busch said immediately afterward. “You know something is going to bite you. You know something is going to come up.”

Busch’s lead dwindled from 96 points to 59 points with races at Phoenix, Darlington and Homestead remaining.

“I just had one of those feelings that something was going to happen, and today was our day,” Busch said. “Next week we’ve got to come back just as strong.”

Busch retained the points lead, but only through the misfortune of others.

Gordon slipped from second to third in the points after transmission problems put him in the garage for 26 laps. Gordon was not running well even before that, battling a loose car and suspension problems.

“Nothing was really going our way today,” Gordon said. “I knew that Kurt had his problems, but we weren’t able to capitalize on them.”

Earnhardt seemed to have a top-10 finish locked up and was running in the top three with 15 laps to go. But he moved up in front too quickly after passing Carl Edwards and contacted Edwards’ left-front fender. Earnhardt spun and hit the inside wall of the backstretch.

“I am not worried about the points,” said Earnhardt, who won the spring race at AMS. “We came here to win the race, and that is what I was trying to do. We could have gained a lot of points, and that would have been nice, but it is hard to race like that.”

Earnhardt finished 33rd. He gained points on Busch, but fell from third to fifth in the standings.

Ryan Newman climbed from ninth to seventh in the standings despite a costly mistake in the pits. Newman was leading the race after starting on the pole, but picked up a vibration after his first pit stop. A loose wheel was the culprit, and he lost two laps on an extra green flag stop. Newman finished 17th, two laps down.

Elliott Sadler, eighth in the standings, broke his steering trying to avoid a crash with Joe Nemechek in the pits. He went to the garage and finished 36th, 63 laps down.