INDIANAPOLIS -- Once again, it was close but no cigar for Matt Kenseth. But even without winning the Brickyard 400 on Sunday, the reigning Winston Cup points leader continues to smoke his primary chasers in the standings.

Kenseth's runner-up finish to Kevin Harvick in the 10th renewal of what has quickly become one of NASCAR's top summer classics allowed the Wisconsin native to further extend his lead over chief pursuers Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon.

Kenseth held a dominating 232-point advantage over Earnhardt coming into this weekend's event. He leaves Indianapolis with an even larger 286-point edge over Earnhardt, and a 318-point advantage over No. 3 Jeff Gordon, who finished fourth in Sunday's race.

"Yeah, I feel good about our day," said Kenseth, who earned $314,425. "I feel good whenever you can finish races and gain points, but you feel good when you finish and run good enough to win. That's what we're here for.

"We're out here to try to win races and we did everything we could to try to win the race. At the end we came up a little bit short."

Kenseth twice held the lead in Sunday's race for a total of 10 laps, including from laps 133 to 141 of the 160-lap event.

But his chance of becoming one of the few select members of the Brickyard 400 winner's club were dashed on the final pit stop of the race. Debris on the race track brought out the yellow caution flag. Kenseth and most of the other leaders -- with the exception of McMurray and Harvick -- came in for a final gas splash and two-tire change.

Kenseth had an excellent pit stop and emerged back onto the race track in fairly good shape nonetheless, falling in behind McMurray (the leader at that point) and Harvick in third place.

However, another caution came out a few laps later on lap 146 after a spectacular seven-car wreck that involved Sterling Marlin, Kurt Busch, Joe Nemechek, Mike Skinner, former Brickyard winner Ricky Rudd, Terry Labonte and Jimmie Johnson.

After a quick cleanup, the race boiled down to a 10-lap final sprint following the restart. It was three laps from the end that Kenseth passed McMurray on in the inside entering Turn 3. With Harvick maintaining a gigantic 3.535-second lead at that point, Kenseth got as good as he was going to get at that point and settled for a strong runner-up finish.

	Kenseth finished second at the Brickyard on Sunday.

"By the time I got clear of the 42 (McMurray), Harvick had a short chute on me and I knew I wasn't going to make that up without something happening to him, but I felt we had a good car at the end. Just that one restart where everything got jumbled up and Robby got around me and Jamie kind of messed us up and we couldn't overcome that.

"But if we had a shot at (Harvick), maybe bumper to bumper, maybe we could've caught him, but maybe we couldn't have."

Harvick admitted Kenseth and McMurray dwelled heavily on his mind when he took the lead 15 laps from the end, but as he continued to stretch out his margin, he knew that the only thing that would prevent him from taking the winner's prize would be mechanical failure or his own mistake, and not Kenseth, who was a distant speck in Harvick's rearview mirror.

"The strategy really played into our hands," Harvick said. "We were well within our fuel window and were done pitting. We pretty much had made our bed at that point. ... I ran the first five laps (after the restart) as hard as I could, and the last five laps on cruise control."

Kenseth's incredible knack for consistency this season without dominating the wins category -- he has only won once this season (at Las Vegas) -- has prompted some rumblings within the sport that the current points structure be modified or totally scrapped after this season so that victories are made more valuable in the whole scheme of things.

That argument is based considerably on what Kenseth has managed to do this season. In the first 21 races, his incredible tenacity has carried him to the aforementioned win, nine top-five and 16 top-10 finishes. He may not necessarily be the best in every race, but consistency earns championships more so than wins in this day and age of Winston Cup racing.

"Our stuff's been consistent and we've had good cars, and today we made good pit stops and did everything right, so it feels good to have a car that consistent that'll run that good up front," Kenseth said.

Still, Kenseth admits he is concerned that he hasn't visited Victory Lane more thus far in 2003.

"Yeah, there's somewhat of a frustration of not winning," Kenseth said. "I feel like today we did everything we could. Even though we got ahead of Jamie at the end, I don't think we had the car to win today. There's been a few times this year where I felt like we had the car to beat and we didn't get it done and didn't win the race. That's part of it. I really want to get back to Victory Lane soon, but on the other hand, I'm very thankful for how we've been running."

Team owner Jack Roush, who has come close four different times with second-place finishes (all by Mark Martin) but has never had one of his drivers win a Winston Cup championship is hoping Kenseth is able to maintain his consistency streak through the remainder of the season.

But Roush also knows such a task won't be easy by any stretch. Kenseth has led the points for the last 18 weeks. Last season, Sterling Marlin was No. 1 for 25 of the first 26 weeks, only to go into a tailspin that knocked him out of first and then saw his season end prematurely and in a most disappointing way when he sustained season-ending injuries seven weeks from the end of the campaign in a crash at Kansas

"I've got my fingers crossed and holding my breath, just trying to focus on the things that have caused us to fail and not be able to finish (in the past) and hoping it holds out," Roush said. "We haven't had any bad luck this year and a lot of it is luck. We haven't had bad luck, other people had bad luck. We will have bad races for reasons that we can't plan for that can't be avoided, and it's out there for us. But it didn't happen today."

Dominating Dodges
Since its return to Winston Cup racing in 2001, Dodge has developed a reputation as being especially strong on superspeedways such as Daytona, Talladega and Indianapolis, a fact that once again played out this weekend.

Three of the top four qualifiers for Sunday's race were Dodge Intrepids, driven by Ryan Newman on the outside pole, followed Bill Elliott and a surprisingly strong effort from Ward Burton, who has struggled much of this season thus far.

By race's end, Dodges claimed four of the top 10 places, proving to be the most dominating car make on the race track (Chevrolet and Ford each had three top-10 finishers). McMurray (third), last year's Brickyard 400 winner Bill Elliott (fifth), Jimmy Spencer (eighth) and Rusty Wallace (10th)

Skinner's debut

	Skinner

Veteran driver Mike Skinner had a disappointing debut in his role as interim driver of the No. 01 Pontiac, finishing 35th after being knocked out on lap 146 as part of the seven-car wreck. Skinner was replacing Mike Wallace, who had driven the car since primary driver Jerry Nadeau was injured earlier this year at Richmond (Va.).

"You know, they say cautions breed cautions, and they were right," Skinner said, referring to the fact that there was one caution on lap 139 for debris on the race track, followed by a restart on lap 145, which lasted just one lap before the multiple-car collision.

"Our Pontiac had about five of them passed in the first lap and we thought, 'Heck, we're going to get a good top-15 finish. It will be a good start for us.'"

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way as Skinner was collected in the final wreck of the race.

"As far as what happened, I don't know," he said. "They got all together right there. We had it missed, and one (of the other cars involved) came down off the wall and plowed the heck out of us. Hopefully, Boris (road-racing specialist Boris Said, who will drive the car next Sunday at Watkins Glen, N.Y., before Skinner returns to the driver's seat) can get us a good run at the Glen, and I can continue our little venture at Michigan."

Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at Motorsportwriter@Yahoo.com