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FORT WORTH, Texas – Joey Logano‘s impressive run in the rain-delayed AAA Texas 500 late Sunday evening was beneficial to his title run in the big picture. But even a runner-up effort still hurt a bit.

Logano led a race-best 178 of the 293 laps completed — nearly three times that of any one else — but finished second to Carl Edwards when rain started pouring down from the Fort Worth skies late Sunday. NASCAR declared the race officially over 41 laps before its scheduled distance because of the rain shower.

The hard-fought result moved Logano up in the standings — from fifth to second — heading next week to Phoenix International Raceway, where the emerging top-four drivers will have earned a shot at the Sprint Cup championship.

But the race winner Edwards joins last week’s winner and points leader Jimmie Johnson with automatic Chase berths. And after such a dominant performance from Logano, losing that chance to advance Sunday night sure smarted.

“When you’re that close to winning and you lead the most laps, second stings,” Logano said. “That’s our goal every week, is to win. Anything short of that is a failure. I feel like we were so close to that today.

“But ultimately, we did gain some points. We’re in right now. We were out going into this race. So, you know, we did the best we could as far as leading laps and getting that bonus point, or those two bonus points with the most laps led as well. But we didn’t get the win part. That would have been nice.”

Logano’s No. 22 AAA Ford was fourth on the race’s final restart and he quickly got around rookie Chase Elliott and veteran Martin Truex Jr. to challenge Edwards’ No. 19 for the point.

But the rain, which caused a six-hour delay to the start of the race, grew increasingly heavy after the field was called down pit road under yellow. NASCAR declared the race officially over less than five minutes after parking the cars.

“We had a shot, we were catching him,” Logano said. “I was in the car saying it was barely raining. Might have been a little biased to say it was barely raining. I am sure most of the field said it was pouring. 

“I was thinking, I need to keep racing this thing until I can get to him. If that means we’re sliding out in the wet, then that’s what we had to do.

“But, you know, I think we would have had a shot. I would have loved to race till the end of the race. I think if we had another restart, my pit crew were on it tonight. They were freakin’ awesome.  I would have loved to come down pit road again and give them another shot to get me on the front row and try to have another restart to clear him.”

Post-race inspection revealed that Logano’s No. 22 Ford only had 19 of the 20 required lug nuts attached, a violation that could be subject to a fine later this week.

As disappointed as Logano may have been with Saturday’s outcome, he remained quite optimistic about the big picture and earning his second chance at his first championship.

“The team did a very good job on executing when we needed to,” Logano said. “Just, you know, didn’t have enough laps. It seemed like the momentum swung the other way about three or four laps to go before the caution came out when I started catching the 19 pretty rapidly. Unfortunately it just started raining. That was the end of the race, so…

“You know, it is what it is. We’re going to be close. There’s a lot of cars that are going to be close going into Phoenix. It’s going to be entertaining. It’s going to be probably the closest Phoenix race we’ve ever seen as far as points. It’s going to be a fun one, for sure.”