Sunoco Pit Move: Dover (cont'd)

"We had jotted down a few numbers on the top of the pit box that if the caution came out before this lap, we would pit," Manion said. "If it came out after that lap, we would stay out. We only had 17 green-flag laps on our tires so it was almost a no-brainer to stay out."

It helped that the rest of the top-five cars on the track at the time -- Newman, Jimmie Johnson, Carl Edwards and Clint Bowyer -- all stayed behind Truex.

"[The] most nervous I got all day was that last caution when I guess there were about 45 or 46 laps to go and we weren't sure whether to pit or not pit," Truex said. "We said, 'Well, we will stay out. Our car is really good on old tires.' Everyone else stayed out, too.

"That was really the only time all day when I thought that our win could possibly be in jeopardy."

Still, Manion said he never felt like he had the win secured until the checkered flag flew.

"I was sitting there with 70 or 80 laps to go thinking, 'All right, what's going to happen?'" he said. "We've been in position before when we had a shot, and it seems like even when we run good, and we're running in the top 10 or top five, it seems like something along the line happens to give us some trouble.

"So I wasn't counting my chickens by any means. I was just hoping and praying that we wouldn't have a bunch of cautions so that it would come down to pit strategy and tires and all that. We were fortunate that it kept going green. Once the white came out, I felt good. I knew we weren't going to have a green-white-checkered. Then I knew."