Edwards struggles to find reason for late-race fall
By Jared Turner - SceneDaily Staff Writer
Sunday, May 18, 2008
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CONCORD, N.C. – For a while Saturday night, it seemed that Lowe’s Motor Speedway president Humpy Wheeler’s midweek prediction that Carl Edwards would win the Sprint All-Star Race might become reality.
Edwards moved forward in a hurry from his 19th starting position and took the lead from Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch with 12 laps left in the race’s second 25-lap segment when Busch began to fade with engine problems. Edwards then went on to win the segment easily over Hendrick Motorsports’ Dale Earnhardt Jr.
So how did the No. 99 Ford end up with a 10th-place overall finish? Well, after the race, Edwards was still trying to figure that out himself.
“That’s a [darn] good question,” he said. “We’ll be working on that. I don’t know. We were so fast and then it’s like the car just fell on its face. I thought we had it won. We’d start up front, take off, but it just didn’t happen. I don’t know what happened.”
Edwards lost the lead to Earnhardt Jr. on the first lap of segment three and slid all the way to eighth by the end of the stanza. Pit strategy moved Edwards up a spot to begin the fourth segment but he lost three positions in the final 25 laps.
“Something with that last set of tires on that last run, it was just off,” said Edwards, who came into the event having won three races this season at tracks with characteristics similar to Lowe's Motor Speedway. “I couldn’t go any faster. That’s that. That’s racing.”
If Edwards couldn’t win, he was at least glad that Gillett Evernham Motorsports’ Kasey Kahne did – especially since Kahne was voted into the race by the fans.
“That’s pretty cool for Kasey," Edwards said. "I think it’s a good thing. I think it’s neat. I think that will empower the fans and he showed that he deserved to be in it, you know?”
Edwards just hopes that he'll be in Kahne's position at the end of next Sunday's Coca-Cola 600 at LMS, a race that is the longest on the Sprint Cup schedule.
“I’m telling you, next week is gonna be a marathon," he said. "There are gonna be guys coming and going and people figuring it out and it’s gonna be about timing and hitting it right on the last run.
"If we would have run in the last run like we did the second one, we were spectacular fast, so we just have to figure out how to do that the last run of the Coke 600.”
- Mentioned Drivers:
- Carl Edwards
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