Carl Edwards gave the Ford Mustang its first victory in Nationwide Series competition by taking Friday night’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 at Texas Motor Speedway.
Edwards started on the pole and led 169 of 200 laps, but had to hold off a hard-charging Brad Keselowski in the closing laps for his first Nationwide win of the season and the 30th of his career.
Ford began using its Mustang model when the series debuted its new car last July at Daytona. The car ran in four races during the 2010 season before NASCAR put it into full use this year.
“This is unreal with the first win for the Mustang,” Edwards said. “It was just an unreal race, and the car was so fast.” MiamiHerald.com
He had luck on his side, too. An accident took out his top competition, Kyle Busch, on Lap 88.
Busch, who had won five of the past six Nationwide races at TMS, crumpled his hood in the back of the No. 52 driven by Tim Schendel, who cut a tire and went up the track into Busch’s path. Busch had been running second, trailing Edwards closely, and didn’t have time to avoid the contact.
“I thought he and I were going to race real hard,” Edwards said. “I was able to get in front of him on that re-start, which was huge. It says a lot about our engines.”
Busch said: “It’s a shame we didn’t get a chance to race it out the rest of the night. We were going to give Carl a shot.” Fort Worth Star Telegram
Busch has led a staggering 1,187 laps in Texas.
“I felt like there was an opportunity for us to win. I’m not going to say we were the winning car, Carl is definitely the winning car. We were making ground on him to where we could get there and at least run with him,” Busch said. “We probably could have put on a really good show with the fans out here in Texas.”
Paul Menard finished third, with Joey Logano and Elliott Sadler rounding out the top five.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was eighth, maintaining the Nationwide points lead over Jason Leffler, who was 15th. Kansas City Star
| 
|