Carl Edwards renewed his nickname, “Concrete Carl,” with his fourth win in the NASCAR Nationwide Series at the Nashville Superspeedway on Saturday.
Driving a Ford Mustang he beat fellow full-time Sprint Cup driver, Kyle Busch by .521 seconds at the 1.33 mile concrete paved oval.
Edwards was victorious three-straight times in 2006-2007, but had not returned to victory lane since then. “Was it 2007?” Edwards said. “That’s a long time to run poorly somewhere. Seemed like every time we came we won for a little while. Was it three in a row? Then all of a sudden, we came here and really struggled. That’s really trying on everybody.” Edwards led 148 laps of the 225-lap race taking the lead from Busch with 35 laps remaining for his second win of the year and 31rst in his career. Two more full-time Sprint Cup series drivers finished in the top-4 with Brad Keselowski in third and pole winner, Joey Logano, in fourth. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was fifth for the best finish among Nationwide regulars and moved into a tie for the points lead with Justin Allgaier. The serious business of winning commenced with a restart with 44-laps to go as Edwards and Busch swapped the lead after racing side-by-side. “At the end of the race, I was pedaling for all I had,” Edwards said. “I was kind of excited at the beginning of the race. I thought, ‘Boy, we’re going to run off with this thing. It’s going to be easy.’ “Then at the end, that was white-knuckle. I was driving as hard as I can drive, racing Kyle and Brad.” “I didn’t quite finish that pass,” Busch said. “He had a really fast car. We could keep up with him momentarily but not for the whole run. It was a good show right there, a little bit of racing back and forth. “Brad was right behind us and kind of lurking in the distance there.” Toronto resident, J.R. Fitzpatrick, made his series debut in the Go Canada Ford starting 21rst and finishing 27th four laps behind the leaders.
Recent Articles
|
Racing Multimedia
Recommendations |