Race to the Chase prompts Gibbs strategy change (cont'd)

On the next-to-last of six cautions Hamlin, who had led only one lap of the first 255, despite starting 11th, pitted and took two tires.

He came out of the pits ahead of Martin Truex Jr., who had led the 46 laps before that; and remained there for the final 45 laps before eking out a .068-second margin of victory -- less than a car length -- over Gordon.

Ford's strategy gave Hamlin the track position every team is rapidly finding out is necessary with the drastically aero-sensitive Car of Tomorrow and Hamlin used it to hold off four cars that took four tires: Gordon, Truex, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson.

Along with those five, Jeff Green, who scored his best finish of the season in sixth, Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick made it a top-eight sweep for Chevrolet. Matt Kenseth (Ford) and Newman (Dodge) rounded out the top 10.

When the race went back under green at Lap 259, and then again at Lap 263, for the final time after an accident in Turn 1 involving Bobby Labonte and David Stremme, Hamlin was the quickest of the lead group of cars for most of the subsequent laps.

"I wasn't exactly feeling good about the four tires [on Truex's car] right behind us," Hamlin said. "But I tell you, I thought I could hold him off for maybe five laps and salvage a good finish after that, but our car just took off."

"It seemed like track position was pretty huge all day," Truex said. "Earlier in the race some guys got up there with two tires and didn't seem to slow them down all that much."

Still, like many in the stadium, Truex thought four tires would prevail.

"I was a little surprised," Truex said at failing to pass Hamlin. "I thought I would be able to get by him, but my car just wouldn't go like it had, for some reason. I don't know if the last set of tires didn't agree with it [but] it just wasn't turning anymore."

"I think when you take these cars to a faster racetrack, you're going to see more of that," Ford said of the advantage of track position and various tire strategies to get it. "These cars are very aero-sensitive -- even at a 1-mile racetrack. If we thought the aero push was bad before, wait until we get some speed with these [COTs].

"Track position is even more important with this car than it was with the other car, and even here at Loudon. Those [last 30] were the fastest lap times we ran all day and we know we shouldn't do that on two tires, but here we were two- or three-tenths faster than we had been all day.

"I didn't expect to see that kind of speed, but some of that was Denny getting up on the wheel when it was time to go and some of that was track position because the guy leading, it's hard to pass him."

By the time Gordon got around Truex, it was too late to catch Hamlin, even with a slide for life off Turn 4 on the last lap.

"You can always look back, and probably I'll be watching the video and say, 'Oh, I wish I would have done this or that,'" Gordon said. "He started watching his mirror there a little bit with about one or two to go, and when he did that, he started running the inside lane, just protecting the inside lane, and it allowed me to get right up on him.

"When he ran that inside lane, it really took away his exit. And had I ran my normal line, I think that I might have actually had a run at him and maybe, you know, had a better shot at getting him.

"As we came off there, he got loose -- I got loose, too, trying to turn underneath him and just made my best effort. I think he kind of knew that even if he got loose off there, it was going to be hard for me to get by him at the start/finish line." (Continued)