As quickly as Jeff Burton gobbled up the ground between himself and Matt Kenseth, just about everyone at Texas Motor Speedway knew Burton would blow past with little time to wave goodbye.
Burton believed otherwise. He was right. He needed every chance he could get.
After stalking Kenseth and threatening his bumper for a dozen laps with dive after dive to the inside, Burton finally made his move with three turns to go Sunday. Burton led only the lap that mattered in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Samsung 500.
"The reason it took me so long to get by him is he's really good," Burton said his former teammate and good friend.
"He found a way to be faster when he needed to be, and he found a way to keep me from being as fast as I could be. That's what you do when you're leading the race with 15 to go."
When Burton made a strong run to the white flag, his momentum finally carried him far enough alongside Kenseth. He sneaked by on the bottom side in Turn 1 and held the position onto the back stretch.
"It's painful to get beat on the last lap, but overall it was a good day," said Kenseth, the 2003 champion from Cambridge, Wis., who figured to be aiming for a top-five finish before leaders began dropping mid-race.
Burton's Chevrolet beat Kenseth's Ford to the line by 0.41 of a second. In scoring his first victory of the season, he denied Kenseth both his second victory and his second weekend sweep. Kenseth, who won the Busch Series race Saturday, won both the Busch and Cup races at California in February.
Burton, 39, also became the first driver to win a second Texas race in 13 events. The first Cup victory of his career came in the track's first race in 1997.
Mark Martin, another former teammate of Burton's and Kenseth's, returned from a two-race break in his part-time schedule to finish third.
Throughout the race, three drivers threatened to turn the 190-mph exhibition into a snoozer.
Four-time champion Jeff Gordon stayed out front for a race-high 173 laps and was building on a lead of nearly 2 seconds when he clipped the wall on the 309th of 334 laps.
When defending champion Tony Stewart spun on the 252nd lap, Kyle Busch slammed into the back of Dale Earnhardt Jr., eliminating two more front-runners from contention.
Then Kurt Busch gave up a 2-second lead to pit with 45 laps left, and found himself trapped in the back when a caution flag flew just after he'd stopped.
When Gordon fell back, Kenseth could hardly believe his good fortune, but Burton closed just as quickly on him.
One hundred ninety thousand people rose along with the tension.
"As soon as I got to him, I was trying to pass him, to be perfectly honest with you," Burton said. "Why we passed him when we did, I have no idea."
The handling on Kenseth's car had changed so drastically that he was sure his right rear tire was leaking. Only when he searched out a new line did he find the traction he sought.
"When I moved up to the top and Jeff caught me - because I couldn't dare let him outside of me - then the car tightened up a little bit where I could hold on for a little while," Kenseth said.
The tire was fully inflated after the race.
And initially, at least, Kenseth's Roush-Fenway Racing crew had to keep him pumped up after a disappointing final mile.
"If I had to do it over, I couldn't do anything else but wreck," Kenseth said.
"I just got beat by a superior car, and Jeff did a great job figuring out how to get around me at the end when I was trying to make it as difficult as I could."
