FORT WORTH, Texas — Taking risks is a whole lot easier when you believe you don’t have much to lose.
Carl Edwards squeezed a victory out of his last tank of gas, racing the last 69 laps of Sunday’s Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway without pitting.
And, this time, series leader Jimmie Johnson ran out of magic.
The combination of Edwards’ successful gamble and Johnson’s 15th-place finish chopped a big chunk off what had been a daunting 183-point lead for Johnson heading into the race. Edwards trails by 106 points with two races remaining.
Although Edwards dominated most of the race, leading 199 of the first 264 laps on the 1 1/2-mile oval, it was the daring call by crew chief Bob Osborne that got his driver the win after several other competitors had used two-tire strategies to get ahead of Edwards 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 lop 77 points off Johnson’s lead.
“We were very close, very close,” Osborne said.
Asked why he would take such a big risk rather than settle for an almost-certain top-five finish that would still have cut substantially into Johnson’s lead, Osborne said it was because he could.
“If the points were closer, or we were in the lead, no, we would not have made that type of decision to gamble,” Osborne said. “We’re in a position where we want to make as many points up as we can. Obviously, we want to finish first, and that’s what we’re shooting for right now. It was just a risk that I thought was worth taking.”
Edwards, who inherited the lead when Greg Biffle pitted with 13 laps remaining, beat runner-up Jeff Gordon by more than eight seconds — most of the front straightaway — and still had enough gas left to do a couple of victory doughnuts.
