LOUDON, N.H. -- As raindrops fell three weeks ago at Pocono Raceway, Denny Hamlin was livid at his race team not taking a chance to win; his Joe Gibbs Racing crew chief, Mike Ford, staunchly defended a strategy that was short-term conservative.

On Sunday at New Hampshire International Speedway, Hamlin and Ford put their No. 11 Chevrolet Impala in Victory Lane at the Lenox Industrial Tools 300, the 10th race before the cutoff for the Chase for the Nextel Cup, thanks to a bold strategic move.

Lap-by-Lap

Denny Hamlin went in for two tires on Lap 256, took the lead on Lap 257 and held on to win the Lenox Industrial Tools 300.

• Complete story, click here
• Notebook: More COTs fail
• Race Video, click here

"The big difference from Pocono to here was we've got a few more races under our belt and we've put a few more points behind us," Ford said. "We've got to the point where, with 10 to go [until the Chase] we feel we're comfortable inside [those qualified for the Chase] and when an opportunity comes up, we can be aggressive."

After Pocono, Hamlin was third in the standings, 247 points behind Nextel Cup championship leader Jeff Gordon but only 438 clear of 13th-place Ryan Newman.

Coming into New Hampshire, Hamlin had moved into second behind Gordon and closed that gap -- but most importantly, he was 548 points clear of Newman.

Hamlin complained in Pocono because he was frustrated at having what he felt were no fewer than three potential winning cars to that point of the season, and another chance to get the 10 points per win seeding bonus that will be used to set the Chase field was lost.

On Sunday, Ford felt it was time to strike.

"I don't know that it gets more aggressive than what we did [Sunday]," Ford said. "We didn't have the best car, and the only way we had a shot to get those 10 points inside the Chase is to shoot for the win -- which for most of the race didn't look like we were good enough to do.

"But that was our only shot, and it did work out. It was surprising, but it did work out."

"Mike was biding his time on when to make that two-tire call at the end," Hamlin said. "Of course I was giving them an earful at the beginning of the race about, 'I just need some track position.' It was so hard to pass, I knew if we just got that clean air that we would be in better shape."

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."

"My right foot was just shaking like crazy the last three laps -- you know, you try to hold the gas pedal down and all you're doing is going crazy with the right foot because you know, you're getting nervous," Hamlin said. "You see Jeff coming and you're trying your best not to be that guy who chokes under pressure.

"Those last three laps, when I knew I just couldn't make a mistake, I really slowed down. It was better to let those guys get a little bit closer and not make a mistake, than it was to just go all-out and then open up the door for those guys to get a win."

Hamlin said he's hoping to bank some long-term goodwill from the victory.

"This is a good confidence booster for this race team," Hamlin said. "This is my first win where I didn't have just an absolute dominant racecar all day, and this is what we needed as a race team.

"We had come so close so many times this year, we always talk about what we could or should have -- but the bottom line is we weren't going to have anything going into the Chase if we didn't start getting wins. I didn't want to start too far behind the Hendrick cars as far as the Chase is concerned because I knew this Chase is going to come down to 10, 15 points.

"I firmly believe that. We are not going to be able to start 50, 60 [points] behind and overcome it without them having problems. If we start 20, 30 behind -- I think we can beat them on the racetrack by that much.

"For us, we're being competitive every week, and that's what's keeping us motivated right now is we know when we unload we have a top-five racecar each and every time we hit the racetrack. With a couple lucky breaks here and there, we can win a lot of races. We just have to keep doing the things we're doing and not have any bad luck."

And make the right calls.

"It's going to come down to bonus points, and we scored some of those [Sunday]," Ford said. "It was more than a 10-point gain; it was a 20-point swing, because Jeff didn't win.

"This was big for our confidence, but the number we had in our head was about eight to 10 races from the Chase, if we were comfortable with where we were [in the standings], to start taking chances.

"Well, it's 10 to go and the season is kind of starting to fall into place for us. We don't have all the wins that we'd like to have, but it's to the point where we can be aggressive when we think we need to be and [Sunday] we thought that."

Ford said that three months from now, when New Hampshire opens the fourth annual Chase, he might go a different route.

"Coming back to Loudon, inside the Chase the next time I don't know that you'd make the same call," Ford said. "There's a little more to lose in that situation than there would be [Sunday], so it's typical that the guys out front can be more aggressive and their playbook is a lot more wide-open than the guys who have to not make any mistakes."