Carl Edwards raced to victory Saturday at the Nationwide NorthernTool.com 250 in West Allis, Wis., home of the “Milwaukee Mile.”
Edwards, in his Ford Fusion, beat Kyle Busch’s Toyota to the checkered flag for his first Nationwide victory this season, after beginning the race from the back of the pack of 43 drivers.
In the latest Nationwide standings, Saturday’s victory helped Edwards trim 10 points off the lead of Busch, who has compiled 2,391 points to 2,264 for Edwards. United Press International
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It’s a repeat victory at Milwaukee and the first Nationwide win of this season for Edwards, who took the lead from fellow Cup commuter Kyle Busch with 44 laps left in the race and wasn’t significantly challenged the rest of the way.
“It’s good,” Edwards said. “We’ve not been as competitive as we could have been, and should have been, all year.”
Edwards and Busch flew more than 2,000 miles from California earlier in the day, missing qualifying for Saturday’s race — meaning they would have to start at the back of the pack after replacement drivers qualified their cars_ but arriving in time to take the green flag.
Both drivers quickly made up ground once the green flag dropped, climbing into the top 20 only 18 laps into the race and into the top 10 by lap 55.
Busch then took over the lead on lap 123, coming off pit road first after a round of pit stops under caution. But Edwards began to gain ground on Busch during a subsequent long green-flag run, and some drama developed as a piece of metal began dragging and sparking near Busch’s right-rear wheel. The Associated Press
“Today we won the way you like to win races,” Edwards said.
“We drove past everybody and had a good clean race, and that was fun. It was a good day today.”
Then Edwards and team owner Jack Roush took the trophy from the NorthernTool.com 250 back to Sonoma, Calif., where they hope to have an even better day in the Sprint Cup race Sunday at Infineon Raceway.
Kyle Busch, another Cup regular making the pair of long flights, finished second after a back-and-forth battle with rookie Erik Darnell in the final 30 laps. But passing beneath the checkered flag 5 seconds after Edwards left him sullen as he sat through a mandatory but brief post-race news conference.
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“Well duh, I’m not here to finish second,” said Busch, who won a late-model race at the track last fall.
“I traveled all this way to win the race and I didn’t win the race.”
Busch has won four of the first 14 races and leads Edwards by 127 points atop the standings. This was Edwards’ first victory of the year in any NASCAR series.
Edwards jump-started his 2008 Nationwide season by winning at the Mile, and this year he hopes to do the same with his new crew chief, Menasha native Dan Stillman. Edwards won seven races after Drew Blickensderfer took over at Milwaukee, which led to a promotion to Matt Kenseth’s Sprint Cup team. Stillman inherited the job in the off-season. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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