A late race pit road hiccup proved costly for Jeff Burton and the No. 31 AT&T Team USA Chevrolet Impala SS, ultimately resulting in a 21st-place finish in Sunday’s Sunoco American Red Cross Pennsylvania 500 at Pocono Raceway.

On the day’s last pit stop, the AT&T Racing team was penalized by NASCAR for an uncontrolled tire, resulting in a pass-through penalty for the bright orange and white Chevy. Under the circumstances of the penalty, the South Boston, Va., native was forced to drive down pit road under green-flag conditions.

At the end of the day, the infraction cost Burton and company several positions but all wasn&rsqo;t lost as the 41-year-old driver finished on the lead lap and gained ground on current NASCAR Cup Series point leader Kyle Busch after he finished 36th. Despite dropping two positions, to fifth, in the season championship standings, Burton knocked off 42 points off Busch’s lead and sits just 50 markers behind second-place Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Burton started the 500-miler from the 39th position and made a quick charge up the leaderboard, moving up to 22nd, in the opening 20 laps but a loose-handling condition prevented him from gaining any more ground.

Four pit stops later and crossing the halfway mark, the 20-time Cup Series driver was up to 18th and slowly gaining ground on the competition.

With rain showers threatening the Long Pond area, crew chief Scott Miller formulated a plan to get his driver to the front of the field by bringing him to pit road for fresh ride-side tires when the sixth caution flag flew on lap 128. A little more than half the field stayed on the racing surface and when rain forced NASCAR to throw the red flag with 69 laps remaining, Burton was scored 28th.

Forty-one minutes later, the track was dry, engines re-fired and Miller’s plan looked like it was about to unfold.

With half the field now on a different pit cycle, Burton crept up the leaderboard when the frontrunners began making pit stops on lap 154. He was 15th on lap 155, 13th on lap 150 and 11th on lap 160.

Burton gave up his sixth running position on lap 166 for his final green-flag pit stop of the day. As the AT&T over-the-wall crew went to work replacing all four Goodyear tires and adding fuel, NASCAR penalized the team for not having a team member in contact with the outside tire, resulting in the ill-fated penalty.

For the remainder of the 200-lap event, Burton raced to re-claim as many positions as he could and as some of the frontrunners began running out of gas with less than two laps to go, Burton capitalized and picked up several positions, crossing the finish line 21st.

Carl Edwards captured his fourth victory of the season and was followed to the line by Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson. Richard Childress Racing teammate Kevin Harvick finished fourth while David Ragan rounded out the top-five finishers.

Fellow RCR teammate Clint Bowyer finished sixth.

Next weekend, the NASCAR Cup Series travels to Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International for the final road course race on the 2008 calendar.

Live coverage of Centurion Boats at the Glen will take the green flag Sunday, August 10 at 1 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time and will be telecast live on ESPN. The event will also be broadcast live on the Motor Racing Network and Sirius Satellite Radio. Qualifying will be televised live on ESPN2 Friday, August 8 beginning at 3 p.m. EDT. MRN and Sirius Satellite Radio will also provide live qualifying updates.

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