Carl Edwards gets fourth-career win at Bristol
Unsurprisingly, the entire Joe Gibbs Racing team was strong at Bristol on Sunday. Surprisingly, Carl Edwards was the only car that made it to the finish without incident.
He was the first car to cross the finish line too. After starting from the pole, Edwards led over half the race (276 of 500 laps) and pulled away from the field on the race’s final restart with less than 10 laps to after Regan Smith’s crash.
[Related: Quick takeaways from Bristol]
Not only did Edwards have a good car on longer runs, he was nearly unbeatable on restarts. Of course, by leading more than 50 percent of the race, you get to be near or at the front for its entirety. And when you’re out front at Bristol, you get to start in the much-preferred outer line. It’s incredibly hard to pass a car on the inside.
It was Edwards’ fourth-career win at Bristol and his first with JGR, the team he joined in 2015.
Edwards’ teammates had horrible days. Two of them didn’t even make it to the finish. Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth both had fast cars but they each had multiple tire issues. After each driver slapped the wall a second time for a flat right-front tire, his race was done.
[Related: Kyle Busch hits wall twice and spins as effort for third-straight win falls short]
Denny Hamlin had tire issues too along with early-race contact on pit road with Brian Scott. Overall, the team had seven tire problems (Busch’s first flat tire was because of a melted bead, Goodyear noted the cause of the others were under investigation) but Edwards was immune from them.
Hamlin at least made it to the finish, however. He finished 20th while Kenseth finished 36th and Busch was 38th. Despite his problems, Kenseth led the second-most laps of the race with 142. While Busch said his car was extremely tight – a condition that puts more stress on the right-front tire – Kenseth said he had no handling issues. And once again ended up with a poor finish in 2016 despite showing a bunch of speed.
“We just keep blowing right front tires, I don’t know why,” Kenseth said after emerging from his car. “The first one was a little confusing, I knew I blew a right front, but I thought they were telling me it wasn’t flat so I was a little confused. This one just blew a lot earlier and the angle was a lot worse hitting the wall … I was encouraged again today even though we don’t have the result. I have a smile on my face and we’ll go to Richmond and try again.”
Why is Kenseth smiling? Well, he won the last Cup race at Richmond and led 352 laps in the process.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished second after dropping two laps almost immediately at the start of the race. Kurt Busch finished third while Chase Elliott and Trevor Bayne rounded out the top five.
[Related: Junior bounces back from dead battery at race start to finish second]
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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!
