Carl Edwards won for the second straight week, squeezing a victory out of his last tank of gas. And this time Jimmie Johnson ran out of magic.
The combination of the win by Edwards and a 15th-place finish by Johnson in Sunday's Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway moved the race winner within 106 points of NASCAR Sprint Cup points leader Johnson with just two races remaining.
Although Edwards dominated most of the race, leading 199 of the first 264 laps on the 1.5-mile oval, it was a daring call by crew chief Bob Osborne that got Edwards this win after several other drivers used two-tire strategies to get ahead of him near the finish.
"I thought Bob made a mistake on the four-tire change," Edwards said. "But Bob came up with a way to win that thing anyway."
Osborne breathed a sigh of relief after seeing his driver chop 77 points off Johnson's lead.
"We were very close, very close," the crew chief said.
But Edwards, who inherited the lead when Greg Biffle pitted with 13 laps remaining, beat runner-up Jeff Gordon by more than 8 seconds -- most of the front straightaway -- and still had enough gas left to do a couple of victory doughnuts.
Even before he got out of his car, Edwards, who began the day a daunting 183 points behind Johnson in the Chase for the championship, asked Osborne on the radio: "Hey, where did Jimmie Johnson finish?"
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The answer certainly pleased Edwards, who is hoping to keep Johnson from winning a record-tying third straight Cup title.
