ESPN Sprint Cup

FONTANA, Calif. -- Jeff Burton grabbed Richard Childress Racing teammate Clint Bowyer by the arm and engaged in what appeared to be a heated conversation moments after the conclusion of the Daytona 500.

Burton admitted they were mad but wouldn't say why.

A team official said it was because each driver, who led over the last 20 laps, felt he didn't get enough help from the other.

"I think everybody thought I was mad at Clint like Clint did something to me that I thought he shouldn't have done, but that was the furthest from the case," Burton said before Friday's Sprint Cup practice in California. "I never felt Clint did anything to negatively affect my race.

"I think we were both frustrated. I'm sitting there leading the Daytona 500 with three to go. He's leading it with [16] to go. Clint had a good car and I finished 13th and he finished [24th]," Burton said.

If Bowyer was mad at anybody it should have been Juan Pablo Montoya, who spun him out of the lead with 16 to go. But Bowyer never confronted Montoya and has no plans to.

Burton, upon reflection, was mad at himself.

"Armchair quarterbacking is honestly what makes sports fun," he said. "I'm watching basketball and I'm watching an 18-year-old playing and I'm thinking, 'What a dumbass! How can you be that stupid to make that kind of play,' and he's an 18-year-old.

"I'll be honest, I felt stupid after the Daytona 500 because we were leading the race with three to go and you finish 13th," he said. "Why wouldn't you feel stupid? In that situation we were in, had I just taken off and got a normal restart we weren't going to win. I tried to do something and shake things up to confuse people to try to steal a win."

Instead, he went backwards.

"What's interesting about our sport is I did the same thing on the last restart as I did on the next-to-last restart and on the next-to-last restart it worked," he said. "At the end of the day, you are only judged by the result and I didn't get it done."

Neither driver did.

"I think we were both frustrated and we should've been," Burton said. "If we're going to skip out of Daytona finishing where we finished and be happy then we are in the wrong business.

"There's no strife amongst the drivers," he said. "There's none of that. We did have a discussion and it is clear that you can't have productive conversations as soon as the race is over. That just can't happen. But there's nothing leaving Daytona that we have any concern about whatsoever."

David Newton covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at dnewtonespn@aol.com.