Travis Gregg led all but one lap in the Firestone 100(Texas 100) at Texas Motor Speedway. But don’t think it was a breeze.

Gregg gave Sam Schmidt Motorsports its ninth Menards Infiniti Pro Series career victory, beating Wade Cunningham to the checkered flag by 0.0424 of a second – the third-closest finish in series history.

“I had pressure from behind the whole race, seeing the two guys behind me in the mirrors,” said Gregg, who started and finished second in his series debut last October at this track. “I was in the passenger seat last year following Thiago (Medeiros). I just wanted to be in his shoes this year. That’s the way it turned out.”

Three of the five closest margins of victory in the series have come at the 1.5-mile high-banked oval.

“Going around the outside at this track is difficult because of the banking,” said Cunningham, who was runner-up for the third consecutive race in the No. 33 Visit New Zealand car for Brian Stewart Racing. “So trying to go around the outside of Travis right there at the end, you’re driving uphill. Unless you have a lot more momentum, it’s pretty difficult to get past. I was a nose short at the end of it.”

It was the second victory of the season for the Ohioan – repeating his victory from the pole at Homestead-Miami Speedway – in the No. 7 Lucas Oil Products Dallara/Infiniti/Firestone.

He is the first repeat winner through five events, with the Liberty Challenge on the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway next up on June 18.

“Starting from the pole, I was going to make it really hard for people to pass me,” said Gregg, who regained the points lead from Cunningham. “That was my strategy.”

It worked. Teammate Chris Festa led Lap 52 – passing Gregg at the start/finish line just before the only caution period of the race when the No. 11 Tan Rio – Millenium Aire entry driven by P.J. Abbott made light contact with inside retaining wall on the backstraight.

“(Festa) got next to me, but it’s hard to make a high-line pass,” Gregg said. “We had to keep it low, and that’s what we did today.”

Cars 19 (Festa in the Western Union - CareCentric – SSM car), 20 (Jay Drake in the Vision Racing car) and 21 (Nick Bussell in the JL West Motorsports car) finished third through fifth.

“Basically, our plan was at the beginning of the race to fall in behind Travis and draft him and I together for the whole race and build out a little bit of a gap,” Festa said. “Unfortunately, Wade and Jay had good cars as well, so they were able to keep with us and really dice with us. So that didn’t really work out for us the way we planned.

“We got to the end of the race, about two laps to go is when the crew came on the radio and said, ‘All right, we go two to go, got to make a move, now is the time.’ That’s when I started trying to get around Travis. I just didn’t time it quite right. Wade was able to get underneath me and take second place away from us.

“But it was a good race. We gave the crowd a very good race today. At least we can feel good about that.”