Showtime Southern 500 Recap
Carl Edwards began his weekend at Darlington with a strong showing in the only practice session and boosted it with a fourth run in Coors Light Qualifying. He was very confident when the race began at Darlington with the setup that crew chief Bob Osborne had provided.
Early in the race, he reported to Osborne that the car was tight. On lap 36, Osborne brought Edwards down pit road for the first time and the team decided on four tires and made a slight air pressure adjustment on the car. It was 23 laps later that Edwards came over the radio that it felt as if the left rear wheel was loosening. The problem proceeded to go away and Edwards continued to run amongst the top-five.
The second pit stop occurred on lap 74 and the team was able to get Edwards out of the pits wit a 14.6 second pit stop. On lap 114, Edwards took to the lead with little challenge from Kasey Kahne. It didn’t last long as the caution fell on lap 122 for debris. He cmae back to pit road on lap 123, and the team gave him a 15.2 second stop with little adjustments.
On lap 189, Carl Edwards recieved his first “Darlington Stripe” of the night, but it did little damage to the No. 99 Aflac Ford as he kept going after the leader. It was on lap 26, it was looking like Carl Edwards was going to be the man to beat at the endof the event. His Ford was very quick and he was putting distance between Kasey Kahne and himself. However, with 10 laps to go, a blown engine on Jeff Burton’s Chevrolet brought out the caution and Osborne decided to bring Edwards down for two right side tires. Three cars decided to stay out for track position and take a shot with old tires. Edwards restarted in fourth place behind Regan Smith, Brad Keselowski and Tony Stewart.
He was able to get around the 2 and 14 very quickly. One last caution fell for a heavy crash by Clint Bowyer and Edwards had to restart 2nd. He was unable to get around the 78 of Smith and had to settle for second place, but extended his points lead out to 23 going to Dover International Speedway.
“I definitely underestimated that restart a little bit,” Edwards said. “I saw Regan spin his tires and I heard him pedaling a little and I thought, ‘Man, don’t beat him to the start-finish line’ because we’ve got such an advantage with these tires that I didn’t want to lose that way. So as soon as I started pedaling to stay even with him, Brad and him hooked up and they were gone, and then I was chasing. Man, I really felt like that was our race to win. We had a great lead that we earned all night and it was unfortunate we had that yellow. Regan is a heck of a guy. That’s NASCAR racing and as upset as I am to have lost that race, I’m happy for Regan and his accomplishment, but I’ll run that one back a few times in my head.”
