Edwards stays alive in Texas
FORT WORTH, Texas — No reason for Jimmie Johnson to panic. Not yet anyway.
As frustrating as Johnson's race was at Texas, struggling to a 15th-place finish while Carl Edwards gambled on fuel and won by a wide margin, Johnson maintained a somewhat comfortable 106-point lead in NASCAR's Sprint Cup chase with two races left.
Still, Johnson knows that his third consecutive championship isn't quite wrapped up.
"Man, there's been a race the whole time. You just never know what's going to happen," Johnson said. "Now that comfort margin's even closed up more. So it's still a race."
Edwards won for the second consecutive week, squeezing a victory out of his last tank of fuel Sunday in the Dickies 500, slashing 77 points off his second-place deficit behind Johnson.
Johnson goes next week to Phoenix, where he's won the last two Cup races and finished seventh or better the last six, looking to stretch his margin before the season finale. If Johnson finishes seventh or better in both races, there's no way he can lose the title.
"If I get stuffed in the fence the first run, I finish 43rd, they're right there," Johnson said. "My goal is to outrun those guys. My goal's to win the race, try to lead the most laps, gain points on those guys so that we go to Homestead with as many points as we can."
At the 1Z\x-mile high-banked Texas track, no one was going to outrun Carl Edwards, even as he had to slow down late to conserve fuel while going the final 69 laps without a stop.
Edwards finished 8.31 seconds ahead of polesitter Jeff Gordon for the largest margin of victory at Texas — nearly 3 seconds more than the previous record. Jamie McMurray was third and Johnson finished a lap down, never able to get back on the lead lap after falling back early.
It completed a Texas two-step for Edwards, who also won in April and became the first three-time Cup winner at the track.
Although Edwards dominated most of the race, leading 199 of the first 264 laps, it was the daring no-stop call by crew chief Bob Osborne that got Edwards back to Victory Lane after several front-runners used two-tire strategies to get ahead of his No. 99 Ford near the finish.
Osborne had to keep telling Edwards, who had more than a 12-second lead at one point, to quit going so fast.
"I was just so nervous that we were missing something. I thought there's no way we can go this slow, save this much fuel and still be leading the race," Edwards said. "I needed someone to write it on a card and stick it in front of me."
