The battle for the overall lead was as heated as it was hot in Texas on Saturday for the penultimate round of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship at Circuit of The Americas.

When all was said and done it was the Ganassi Racing #01 car of Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas that led the way, picking up their third win of the season on a fuel gamble that paid off.

“We knew it was going to be tight. We didn’t have the pace. We knew we’d have a lot more fighting chance to stretching it to just two stops. At the same time, you still have to run fast,” shared Pruett after the race.

“We looked at what we needed to do, and we were talking back and forth with the team. Basically we decided I would get as much fuel mileage that I could and go as fast as I could, until I saw the 5 get up on me.”

The final battle came down to the wire with a three-way fight between Scott Pruett, Joao Barbosa and Alex Brundle, which had all three drivers within 1.2 seconds of each other at one point, with Brundle taking over second place with about five minutes to go.

“At that point when they got to me, that’s when I took off. Sometimes traffic plays for you, sometimes it plays against you. For us today, the traffic worked in our favor. We stayed strong all day. I think they cut it just about tight enough on fuel, I ran out of fuel going in to turn 1 and down the hill. I parked it in the chicane on the cool down lap. I couldn’t be more proud of our guys,” added the veteran racer.

While some were thinking more about the championship implications, it wasn’t the case for Pruett who was going for the win.

“Basically towards the end of the race, you take some big chances. I took some big chances at the end. Way off line, picking up a lot of tire rubber. I knew the 42 was coming, I knew they were strong.

“If I went off, I went off. It’s one of those things where when you get to this part of the season you take those huge chances, sometimes they pay off like today and sometimes they don’t. Today was one of those days where I was put in one of those situations where you wanted to take those chances and they paid off,” concluded Pruett.

Finishing second was Brundle and Gustavo Yacaman in the Oak Racing #42 prototype. Championship leaders Barbosa and Christian Fittipaldi placed third in the #5 Action Express Corvette DP.

The #ESM Racing HPD ARX-03b of Johannes Van Overbeek and Ed Brown finished just shy of the podium in fourth with fifth place going to the #60 Michael Shank Racing with Curb/Agajanian Ford EcoBoost/Riley of Oswaldo Negri Jr./John Pew.

In the PC class, 8Star Motorsports with drivers Sean Rayhall and Luis Diaz picked up the win ahead of the #54 CORE Autosport car of Jon Bennett and Colin Braun who fought back from a penalty to finish second and clinch the PC Driver Championship. The #8 Starworks Motorsports car of Mirco Schultis and Renger van der Zande came in third.

Next up will be Petit Le Mans, the final round of the 2014 TUDOR United Championship season, which takes place October 4 at Road Atlanta in a two weeks time.