AVONDALE, Ariz. -- He knew that Jeff Gordon and Ryan Newman were each going to take two tires, he knew that Jimmie Johnson was going to take four. So Dave Rogers calculated his odds and made his decision.

Rogers called for four tires as Kyle Busch came down pit road for the final time Saturday night at Phoenix International Raceway. What the crew chief didn't know was that four other drivers would also opt for only right-side rubber, creating a bottleneck of slower vehicles up front and burying the No. 18 car back in the field prior to the final two-lap shootout on the 1-mile oval.

“

The 39 won, congratulations to them, they deserve it, their crew chief made a great call that put them in Victory Lane. But they know that they didn't have the best race car.

”

-- DAVE ROGERS

"You can only scan so many people and hear what so many people are saying," Rogers said. "I knew that the 24 [car of Gordon] and 39 [car of Newman] were going to take two. I knew the 48 [car of Johnson] was going to take four. I knew what three other cars out of 40 were going to do. You make a decision on that."

That decision didn't work out as Rogers had hoped. Busch restarted in eighth place and finished in the same position, a crushing result for a driver who had led 113 laps and held an advantage of nearly two seconds until Scott Riggs hit the wall with three circuits remaining. The resulting caution brought everyone to pit road, and created a green-white-checkered guessing game that Newman and crew chief Tony Gibson won.

"I like to win races with the best race car. If we would have won, I think we could have said that," Rogers said. "The 39 won, congratulations to them, they deserve it, their crew chief made a great call that put them in Victory Lane. But they know that they didn't have the best race car. They have the trophy, though."

And the No. 18 team has another frustrating week to rue what might have been. Two weeks earlier at Martinsville, Busch was also in the mix to win when a caution came out with six laps remaining. That time Rogers called for two tires -- but many of the leaders stayed out, forcing Busch to restart in eighth place. He was ultimately shuffled back, spun out, and credited with a 22nd-place finish.

Busch could not be located for comment after the race, but a post on his Twitter feed relayed his frustration. "Surprise. Surprise," he wrote. "Another late race yellow that doesn't go our way. Oh well ... Guys gave me an awesome car. Can't thank them enough."

Saturday, Rogers could only shake his head. He knew that Johnson -- who led the same number of laps as Busch, giving each driver five bonus points -- had won at Bristol earlier this season by taking four tires, using the fresh rubber to make up the difference in track position. He knew that No. 48 crew chief Chad Knaus was trying to do the same thing at Phoenix, and thought it was the way to go.

"We knew we were racing the 48 car," Rogers said. "We'd been racing each other the second half of the race. We watched the Nationwide race [Friday] night, and we knew that two tires weren't going to go, and four tires would. We were seeing the 48, knew Chad and Jimmie were going to take four. We figured if he came out with four and we came out with two, he was going to drive right by us. Four tires was definitely the way to go to go fast, but enough people took two that it gave somebody who gambled the chance to win."

Had only two cars taken two tires, Rogers said, he would have liked his chances. But six was too much, and on right-sides only, the vehicles ahead of Busch were slower to get started, and the No. 18 car never really had the opportunity to make up ground.

"You aren't going to win that," said J.D. Gibbs, president of Busch's Joe Gibbs Racing team. "You take two, everybody else takes four, it's just one of those things that's frustrating. Here's the frustrating thing for me, I'm sitting there at the end, this has happened so many times, and you're walking away, and you're thinking, 'They're going to throw a caution, something's going to happen, you just watch.' You don't want to have that in your head, but it's kind of there. So many times that's happened to us. But that's part of life. You learn and grow, and it will come back your way eventually."

Rogers was left to console himself with yet another solid run that moved Busch four places to 12th in the point standings. But he knew it could have been more.

"It's unfortunate, because we're here to race," he said. "We're here to build race cars and go fast, and we did a good job with that. But a part of this game is that gamble. That's part of it, always has been, always will be. When you're the winner, you're happy for it. We've won some races gambling before, and I've never thought twice about it. But when you lose because someone else gambled, it's discouraging. But it is part of racing, and it's something we have to deal with. I'm sure we'll win our fair share this way. Right now, we're losing them."