Carl Edwards won the AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday to punch his ticket as a championship contender at Homestead.  The race was scheduled to be 334 laps, but rain shortened it to 293, and Edwards led 36 of those laps.  “I actually enjoyed it,” Edwards said in Sunoco Victory Lane.  “The pressure was really mounting, and obviously, this is what we had to do. Dave (Rogers, his crew chief) and the guys got me off pit road first. That’s what won it for us.”  Edwards wreck at Martinsville now will not hurt him pointswise, as his win clinches him a birth in the Round of 4.  “We dug ourselves a hole a little bit at Martinsville,” Rogers said. “When I walked up to Carl, he said, ‘No problem. We’re going to go win Texas.'”  Edwards prediction was right.  For Joey Logano, he finished second despite having the dominate car.  He led 178 laps.  “I mean, 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.”  Austin Dillon was spun by Kevin Harvick on lap 263.  Dillon, the polesitter, had been running in the top 5 most of the night and has just passed Harvick, and Harvick hit his bumper on the exit of turn 4 and spun Dillon into the wall.  Casey Mears and Brian Scott were also involved.  “I mean, he tucked down to my door tighter than anybody did all night,” Dillon said. “He knew how tight he was on my door and that is why I got tight and slid up in front of him. He didn’t check up, but he had the opportunity to. He didn’t like it that the silver-spoon kid was out-running him tonight. So we will be all right; we have two weeks left and we just want to come out and win a race.”  Dillon referenced an incident between Harvick and brother Ty three years ago where Harvick called the Dillon brothers “punk a** kids” who raced with a “silver spoon”.  Crew chief Richard “Slugger” Labbe quoted, “Write down that number, we are going to Phoenix and he is going to need a win and we don’t.”  Harvick’s response?   “Slugger says a lot of things that he shouldn’t.  All-in-all there was no intent there and I like racing with Austin and I like everything that they do and there was no reason to…I was running seventh and sixth.  We were on a restart there and he slid up, and he got loose, and I hit the back of him.”  Harvick will most likely need to win at Phoenix to advance.  Could Dillon prevent that by getting payback?  Tune in to NBC at 1:30 on Sunday for the Can-Am 500 at Phoenix to find out.  Here is the current Chase grid.

1. Jimmie Johnson                   ADVANCED

2. Carl Edwards                         ADVANCED

3. Joey Logano                           +1

4. Kyle Busch                              +1

___________________  CUTOFF

5. Matt Kenseth                          -1

6. Denny Hamlin                       -2

7. Kevin Harvick                         -18

8. Kurt Busch                              -34