Carl Edwards looked like he might deny Jeff Gordon his first Texas win while getting his third straight Sunday.
A slow change of the front tires on Edwards’ No. 99 Aflac Ford during a caution cost him the lead and dumped him into 11th place and out of contention when he got back to speed with 26 laps left.
The mishap opened the door for Jeff Gordon to grab that elusive first checkered flag at TMS in 17 races.
“The deal is we’ve had bad pit stops for three years,” said Edwards, who finished in 10th place.
“You did a good job getting us in position to take the lead,” Edwards told his crew on his cool-down lap. “But remember, that car sitting in Victory Lane, we drove right by.”
Those carefully chosen syllables, as well as Edwards’ words to his crew over their radio network in the closing stages may gain weight if their losing skein, which reached seven races after Sunday’s misfortune, continues. That comes into sharper focus when compared to Edwards’ winning ratio a year ago, when he and his crew won nine times, or a victory every four races.
“A win’s a win, and you just can’t give ‘em away like that—it’s just not good,” Edwards said. “I can’t sit here and say we would have won—but damn, we wouldn’t have finished 10th.”
“Races are won a lot of different ways,” Gordon said. “Sometimes the fastest car wins and sometimes the best pit crew gets the win. You never know how the results would have changed had Carl not had his problems. All I know is our team had a great pit stop [and] we won the race.
“That’s because we got out front and we had a fast car the first 10, 12 laps of that run.”
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And that’s probably a fact—as he sat in his car waiting for the final restart—Edwards knew as much as Gordon did.
“I thought, ‘If we can have just one more [good pit stop], we’ll be all right,’ ” Edwards said. “And then we went in leading and came out 11th, and that’s what cost us the race.”
At the same time as Edwards’ wheels spun off, Gordon, the Sprint Cup points leader, had a flawless interchange in his pit.
That vaulted the No. 24 Chevrolet into the lead – and eventually the Winner’s Circle.
It was still a strong day for Edwards’ team, Roush Racing. Greg Biffle took third and led the second-most laps (93). Matt Kenseth also ran strong all day and took fifth. Edwards gave Roush three drivers in the top 10 after the team had just two top 10s the previous three races.
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