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AVONDALE, Ariz. -- A green-flag pit stop and subsequent caution nearly undid a season's worth of work for Martin Truex Jr. and his Furniture Row Racing team here Sunday evening.
But when the skies opened up again and brought an end to the Quicken Loans Race for Heroes 500 at Phoenix International Raceway, Truex found himself officially locked in, one of four drivers that will compete for NASCAR's Sprint Cup championship next weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
"I feel like we've overcome a lot of obstacles, a lot of odds," Truex said of the Cole Pearn-led No. 78 team. "Just proud to be a part of this group and looking forward to having the opportunity to do something we've dreamed about our whole lives next weekend."
He'll be joined by Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch in next weekend's title determining race.
Truex, 35, entered Sunday's race fourth in the points standings and six points ahead of Carl Edwards (Joe Gibbs Racing). Once the race, which was initially delayed for seven hours due to rain, got underway, the two drivers were never separated on the track by more than a couple of cars.
Shortly after the race had passed the halfway mark, Edwards had managed to trim the deficit to three points. Green-flag pit stops began and both drivers had come to pit road when the second caution flag of the race appeared for a crash involving Joey Gase and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
What initially looked to be a devastating turn of events wound up being only a minor setback for Truex and the No. 78 team.
Both drivers were among those caught a lap down, but Edwards, the first driver not on the lead lap, was the beneficiary of the free pass, putting him back on the lead lap. Truex, however, was one of the "wave-around" cars and because he had already completed his pit stop, rolled back into line in 14th, just two spots behind the JGR entry.
Subsequent attempts at a restart were delayed by rain, and when the skies eventually opened up, officials declared the race over. Officially, 219 of the 312 scheduled laps were completed.
With no restart, no positions changed hands and Truex was officially scored in 14th, edging Edwards (12th) to secure the final Chase spot by five points.
"I was real concerned until I looked at the scoreboard, and then I was like 'OK, we're going to be fine. We're going to be back on the lead lap if we get going here,' " Truex said of the fallout front the caution flag. "Really the only guy we were racing was one car ahead of us. We felt OK about it, but you never know who could have (gone) up there and snuck out a win.
"It was just one of those deals where I couldn't believe we got caught by the caution after running almost 200 laps almost green the whole race. We pitted a lap before the caution came out and that's a tough deal. That's happened to us … I can't believe how many times it's happened to us this this year. It's got to be 15 or plus times. We pit, the caution comes out and you're stuck a lap down.
"It's really frustrating because we were having a solid night up to that point, certainly not as good as we'd hoped, but solid. It's always frustrating when those things happen."
Edwards was hopeful that officials would get the track dry and allow the race to continue. "We want to race for sure," he said. "I don't care if we do this thing with row boats or on foot or whatever we got to do. I want to go race."
Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other ideas.
Truex, moves on, still in contention. For Edwards and the No. 19 team, ousted after coming so close, there was the understandable disappointment.
Disappointment, crew chief Darian Grubb said, because of "how hard they've worked all year to come down to something as simple as a rain out."
His team was a first-year outfit added to the JGR stable for 2015 with Edwards coming on board. The group won twice, at Charlotte and Darlington.
"We feel like we could have raced our way back in there and have a shot at it," Grubb said. "We were still five points out, just like we were five points (out) coming in. We knew that was going to be a tough situation, but it ended up that bit us and I hate it for these guys."