NASCAR: Pit strategy Bayne's gain in Texas...briefly

Trevor Bayne and his team gambled on pit strategy in the closing laps of the Duck Commander 500 and it nearly netted them a surprise finish.

Bayne spent parts of the night inside the top 10 and was running eighth on lap 240 when he and crew chief Matt Puccia decided to delay their scheduled green flag stop. As a result, he inherited the lead on lap 260 and held it until lap 272 when those with fresher tires began to catch and pass him.

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They had hoped to catch a caution before Bayne lost the lead, trapping a majority of the field a lap down. Upon pitting on lap 275, Bayne then wanted the race to stay green because he was the only driver who could complete the race on one more stop.

Unfortunately, the yellow waved as soon as Bayne exited pits, undoing everything his team had planned. Bayne ultimately finished 15th and was left wondering about what could have been.

"We were hoping that debris caution didn't happen," Bayne said. "We probably could have had a shot at the win there, I believe, if it stayed green. We were done pitting. We were good to the end on gas and those guys were gonna have to come again. We were on fresh tires, so we went for it and it just didn't work out, unfortunately."

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Bayne believes he had a top-10 car but wanted to go for the win given the opportunity to make the Chase.

"At that time we had kind of fallen off a little bit," Bayne said. "We were a sixth, seventh, eighth-place car. On the long run we could maybe be better than that but they had a little bit of a head start on us so going for it like that you've got a sure shot at maybe being able to win the race and we at least led some laps. It just didn't work out."