2014 NASCAR standings: Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Aric Almirola score career-best finishes

Never having won a Sprint Cup race and running second to his teammate in the closing laps, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. knows what he would have done if he had caught Carl Edwards Sunday night at Bristol Motor Speedway.

“I was thinking that I would use the bumper if the opportunity was there,” Stenhouse said. “If you get the win, you’re in the Chase and you can let the rest take care of itself later. ...I was thinking about doing whatever I could to win.”

The opportunity to battle his Roush Fenway Racing teammate for the win appeared to arise when the caution was displayed with two laps to go setting up a green-white-checkered finish.

But the caution was accidentally triggered by a flagman who mistakenly leaned on the switch for the caution lights and when rain began falling a few moments later NASCAR called the race and declared Edwards the winner.

Nevertheless, for the Stenhouse the runner-up finish was a career-best.

“We got a 1-2 finish for Jack Roush,” Stenhouse said. “...We were able to come home with our first top-five of the year. Hopefully, we can keep that going.”

Despite being a two-time Nationwide Series champion and last year’s Rookie of the Year recipient, Stenhouse is best known for being the boyfriend of Danica Patrick. It’s the 26-year-old’s driving though that is starting to garner attention.

He ended last season with three top 10s in the final 11 races, including a third-place finish at Talladega. And reunited with crew chief Mike Kelley, who guided him to his Nationwide championships, Stenhouse is expected to challenge this year for a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.

”It helps our confidence for sure, he said. “It’s been nice working with Mike again. We’re having a lot of fun. We’re just slowly working and getting better and better.”

Stenhouse wasn’t the only driver to leave Bristol with a career-best result. In third was Aric Almirola, whose previous best finish was a pair of fourths.

Like Stenhouse, Almirola is working with a new crew chief this year in Trent Owens, and he too had a chance for the win late. Almirola was second to the inside of Carl Edwards on a restart with 38 laps remaining, but stuck in the bottom groove he couldn’t get his No. 43 Ford going and allowed Edwards to pull away.

“It feels good,” Almirola said. “You want to win. I saw it right there at my fingertips on that one restart when I raced side-by-side with Carl, but he had a lot better car than we did tonight.”

Rookie of the Year contender Kyle Larson also posted his first career top-10, finishing 10th.

Sprint Cup standings