Anything is possible for sure, but I think it was more of a case of Oswald and the Matco team getting too aggressive with the setup. Here's my thinking why. Steve Torrence had the best car all weekend as he ran low e.t. in all four rounds of qualifying. In the first round Schumacher ran low e.t. of eliminations, 3.78 and Torrence ran a 3.84. These two matched up in the second round and I think both crew chiefs were thinking the other team would hit a home run so they needed to as well. Torrence smoked the tires and Schumacher had a bad run as well (I think 4.05 @ 275) but he got the win. Did Torrence take a dive after making four perfect runs in qualifying and a solid first round run? I don't think so, I think they just got too aggressive on a track that was the hottest they'd seen all weekend. Fast forward to the finals. There was cloud cover and a brief rain delay that helped cool things a bit beforehand. I'm guessing Oswald and team thought the Army team would be able to run something close to what they did in round 1. Thinking Tony would probably run a .78 or .79, Oswald probably tried to run a .77 or .78 even though Antron had 'only' run 3.87, 3.84, and 3.82 in eliminations. So my theory is it wasn't a dive, just Oswald and team getting a bit too aggressive.
In all reality, if we were in the Countdown and Tony needed the points vs. a non team car I would absolutely buy in to your theory.
