Members of Jeff Gordon's pit crew service teammate Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 car at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)

With Gordon out of the race, Johnson crew chief Chad Knaus huddled with Gordon crew chief Steve Letarte and made a shocking decision: Knaus took all of Gordon’s over-the-wall crew to service the No. 48 for the rest of the race.

“Ultimately it is my decision obviously, but we needed to do something,” Knaus said. “This is a team. The 24/48 shop has always operated as a team and that is the way that we see it. It is sad that we had to do that but in interest of Hendrick Motorsports.”

Biffle had the fastest car, but a broken gear in his transmission made him a sitting duck on restarts, and Hamlin was able to take over the lead on Lap 306 and hold on for the final 28 circuits of the race, to win over Matt Kenseth, Mark Martin, Joey Logano and Biffle. Young Trevor Bayne, driving the iconic No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford, finished 17th in his Cup debut.

Johnson, helped by three fast stops performed by Gordon’s crew, rallied from deep in the field to finish ninth, but the 14-point lead he had over Hamlin coming into Texas turned into a 33-point deficit.

“The last four years, we’ve been in a different position,” Johnson said. “I’ve lost plenty of championships in the past, and this is racing, and it doesn’t come easy, and you are not going to get what you want every single year and every single weekend.

“I can promise you this: I am trying as hard as I can. I know my team is. We’re doing everything we can. Thirty-three points back is not where we want to be, but we’re going to work to get back on top.”

As for Hamlin, he appeared perfectly positioned to take the title from Johnson. “For me we're on the cusp of trying to get our first championship, and as long as we keep doing what we've been doing, we should be OK,” he said.

But it was Hamlin’s crew chief, Mike Ford, who unleashed the most incendiary post-race comments. “You put the two pit crews toe to toe and those guys are going to make mistakes,” Ford said of Johnson’s crew. “We've seen it this year, and we went beside them, and those guys faltered, and it made them panic and push to the point where they made changes.”

And he was just getting started.

“I'll be honest with you, I stayed focused on what we needed to do,” Ford said. “We did see all that go on, saw them making mistakes, saw them studying us real hard, and when you put your focus on watching other people, you make mistakes, so I was glad to see that they are watching us and paying attention. That means they are chasing. And they made mistakes in doing so.

Sprint Cup newcomer Trevor Bayne enjoyed a solid debut at Texas Motor Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

“We played our game. I stayed focused on what we needed to do, and I feel like the — you know, that's possible going in, and you watch it, so I think it was kind of a desperation move. But it's something that — I won't say that race team — that Jimmie, Chad and Rick (Hendrick) needed to do if they wanted to win a championship because they just took their team out of it. They removed their team. Their team got them to this point and they pulled them out, so this is more about trying to win a championship for the company and not the team.”

Ultimately, what Ford said fired up the Hendrick squad and Johnson would stage a furious comeback over the final two races of the season to score his fifth consecutive championship.

But on this day in Texas, the spoils went to Hamlin, Ford and the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing team.

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEED.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.