Late-race gamble doesn’t pay off for Craven

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. -- Ricky Craven and crew chief Mike Beam might have wanted to save the gambling for next weekend at Las Vegas.

Craven and Beam opted to stay out when the caution flag flew for debris on the track with 29 laps remaining in Sunday’s Subway 400 at North Carolina Speedway. Hindsight says that was a bad decision, but one Craven stands by wholeheartedly.

“It was a great gamble,” said Craven, the Bud Pole winner and leader of 116 laps Sunday. “I was 100 percent with them. The car would really run. The (car) was a bullet out front. That was the best set of tires I had gotten all day so I didn’t think it was a bad gamble.”

But as the field behind him ducked down the pit lane, Craven knew his time out front was limited.

“Yeah, but we didn’t lose any enthusiasm or let up,” Craven said. “We didn’t give up, it was jut too difficult to fight those guys off with 15-20 laps on those tires. I still think it would have worked if more cars had stayed out. I expected cars from 10th on back to stay out because they had more to gain than lose, but they didn’t and that surprised me.”

Despite having been the lone gambler, and subsequently driving the final stage with inferior equipment, Craven battled to a fifth-place finish. He knows he had a ride capable of reaching Victory Lane.

“Had we been able to get back to the front, I believe we would have matched (Kenseth) door-to-door,” Craven said.