DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Your car is running 20th in the 2010 Daytona 500 with 35 laps to go. There's no way you can make it to the finish on the fuel left in the tank. But it's possible that because of track issues, the race may not go the entire 500-mile distance.

Do you play it conservatively and pit with the rest of the field, or do you gamble and stay out? For crew chief Jimmy Elledge on Sunday, the second option was a no-brainer. He kept Scott Speed on the track when the race was ready to be restarted, and Speed nearly made that gamble pay off when he led 12 laps before getting shuffled back into the middle of the pack when push came to shove.

“

I didn't think we'd go to the end, honestly. And when we were as strong as we were up there, it was even a better idea ...

”

-- JIMMY ELLEDGE

"Restrictor-plate racing, when it gets down to the end and you give all these guys time to sit around and think about what they're going to do and with the track possibly coming apart, the safest place you can be is in the front," Elledge said. "Having 10 laps on our tires and stuff, it had been sitting there for an hour and everything cooled completely off, I thought that maybe we would get an opportunity to not get caught up in an incident. And we weren't within our fuel window of making it to the end.

"It's kind of like a, 'So what? Try it. See what happens.' And it turned out better than I expected. We knew we had a strong car but it even worked out better than I thought. It hopefully should give the driver some confidence that he's sat out there and led this race, and now knows he can do it."

When a three-car accident involving Elliott Sadler, Travis Kvapil and Ryan Newman brought out the caution with six laps to go, Speed was able to duck onto pit road for a welcome splash of fuel. And through three restarts -- two of the green-white-checkered variety -- he was able to work his way back to 19th at the finish.

"The idea was to stay up in the front and try to stay away from the wreck that was going to happen," Speed said. "Unfortunately, the wreck happened a little later than we thought it would and we almost ran out of gas. But as it turns out, we were able to get fuel and we ended up all right."

While Elledge rolled the dice with his contrarian strategy, it was up to Speed to dodge the dangers in the final handful of laps, and he was able to miss the crashes, bringing the car back to the hauler without a scratch.

"It's out of my hands at that point," Elledge said. "It's just up to whether it's in the cards or not, or whether you're going to make it through them deals and being at the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, everybody is going for the same spot. It worked out. It was great."

That wasn't the case in 2009, when Speed had a miserable Speedweeks, tearing up several cars and ultimately getting caught up in a multi-car accident after 125 laps in his first Daytona 500, leaving him with a 35th-place finish.

"Last year, we used up four cars down here and got took out in the race, and that really put us behind the eightball in the top 35 for the points," Elledge said. "We probably left out here [35th] in points. [Sunday night], we came out of here 19th officially, so that's a lot better and it's the same car we started with, going to California."

Instead, Speed carries some welcome positive momentum heading to Fontana, and puts him closer to that much-sought after guaranteed starting point for being in the top 35 in owners' points after five races.

"Every year, if you can score 100 points for the first five races, you're going to be in the top 15 in points," Elledge said. "We've tried to put a big emphasis in staying out of trouble, let's not get caught up in nothing today, and let's get out of here with a solid finish and let's try to log top-20 finishes for the next four weeks."

For Speed, still in the process of making the difficult transition from open wheel to stock cars, what a difference a year makes.

"We got a top-20 finish, which is good for us to start the season with some points," Speed said. "Last year, we got in a big hole and it was really tough to get out of. To come with a solid finish -- I mean, we weren't able to be quite as aggressive as maybe we could have if we had played it safe. [But] we're happy with 19th."

So did Speed get a chance to debate the decision with his crew chief?

"We didn't talk much," Speed said. "That's Jimmy's job. That's what Jimmy gets paid for, to make those kind of decisions. In hindsight, it was the right decision. It would have been real bad if we had to pit under green but, as it turned out, we were able to stay near the front and be out of most of the trouble."

All in all, Elledge was more than pleased with how the strategy played out.

"I didn't think we'd go to the end, honestly," Elledge said. "And when we were as strong as we were up there, it was even a better idea, because it may not go to the end and we could make it to within about five laps to the end. And as strong as we were, we may even slide our way into a top-five finish. I was impressed. It was a good day."