Sunoco Pit Move: Dover

Sometimes the best move a crew chief can make comes long before his car ever takes the green flag. Such was the case for Kevin "Bono" Manion, crew chief for Martin Truex Jr.'s No. 1 Chevrolet.

Manion's decision on Saturday to switch to a setup similar to the car driven by teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. turned out to be the winning strategy 48 hours later.

The car Manion brought to Dover had been run twice this season with varying setups and success. Caught up in a crash, Truex finished 37th at Bristol but ran strongly at Darlington, winding up just outside of the top 10.

"We decided to bring our Darlington package with us," Manion said. "In talking with Tony Gibson and Tony Eury Jr., they were bringing their basic Bristol package with them."

While Truex struggled to find speed in qualifying, Junior nearly won the pole -- which led Manion to rethink his setup in the time between Saturday's two practice sessions.

"We were middle of the road, bouncing on the fence about which way to go," Manion said. "We talked to those guys and basically decided to change our stuff over to be similar to theirs, [and] similar to what we ran at Bristol and as soon as Happy Hour started, we were right on. So it was a good change."

Truex knew it was the right move almost immediately.

"We tried some new stuff this weekend on it and it seemed to work really well for us," he said. "We didn't hit on it until Happy Hour and that's when our car came to life.

"Bono and all his guys don't ever get any credit. So it's nice to give them that [Monday] and put them in the spotlight a little bit and show everybody just how good they are."

Truex's car was almost flawless, leading more than half of the 400 laps and making decisions on the pit box easily for Manion. Despite restarting behind eventual second-place finisher Ryan Newman on Lap 344, Truex quickly regained the lead and proceeded to build a huge advantage.

When David Gilliland and Ricky Rudd made contact on Lap 358, bringing out what would be the final caution flag of the afternoon, the decision was simple: Maintain track position.

"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."