Repeated contact sends Kasey Kahne into the wall, Carl Edwards sliding
Carl Edwards pushed Kasey Kahne into the wall off of turn four. Kahne was not happy and returned the favor a lap later.
And while Kahne’s car sustained damage on both sides from the impact, Edwards ended up with the worse end of the deal.
Let’s rewind to how the conflict started. Edwards and Kahne were racing for a top-five spot just after a restart. Edwards’ car washed up off turn four with Kahne to his outside and Kahne simply had nowhere to go.
“I was being too aggressive on that restart,” Edwards said. “Kasey got on the outside of me and he got just the right position. I started to slide up and I should have backed out of it way earlier. That’s completely my fault and that’s what ruined our day.”
Kahne’s car was sandwiched between Edwards’ and the wall, and as the two barreled down into turn one, Kahne drove close to Edwards to signal his displeasure. He then cut an early entry into turn one and made contact with Edwards, who clipped Denny Hamlin and went into a prolonged slide before eventually hitting the inside wall.
Kahne said Edwards apologized after the race and also said he felt his car could have competed with race-winner Kevin Harvick’s. Well, at least until it was smashed in on both sides, anyway.
“He just stayed in the gas,” Kahne said. “We just needed a full another car worth of racing room there, and just plowed us into the wall. That was discouraging. We had a really good Time Warner Cable Chevy and felt like on the last 20 laps of a race run, we were the best car. Before that, Harvick definitely had us covered. It would have been a lot of fun to at least try to race him there at the end. See if we could catch him. It would have been interesting. He was really, really good and won today. But I feel like we had the second best car and we were really close.”
Edwards was forced to go behind the wall for repairs while Kahne was able to carry on. Edwards finished 42nd while Kahne came home 17th.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
