Carl Edwards will start Sunday’s Ford 400 where he finished last year’s finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway: First.
The Sprint Cup points leader positioned himself well for winning his first championship in NASCAR’s premier series, turning a 175.467-mph lap Saturday for his third pole position this season. After qualifying first for the 10th time in his career, Edwards called the pole “a gift” and said his team “were just hoping to start in front of Tony (Stewart) somewhere and preferably the top five.”
“Things are good; today went very well,” said the Roush Fenway Racing driver, whose No. 99 Ford led Saturday’s final practice and was second-fastest in the first session. “That was a very pleasant surprise to run that well. That truly is one lap, though. The biggest thing is the pit stall selection. That’s hard to put a value on it.” USA Today
Comparing the two championship contenders’ practice performance—Edwards comes into Sunday’s 36th event this season three points ahead of Stewart—Edwards had the fastest single lap, a 31.272-second effort, an average of 172.678 mph, in the opening 90-minute practice compared to Stewart’s 31.533 / 171.249.
But on average, Stewart compared very favorably to Edwards. In Practice 1, Stewart averaged a 32.26-second lap for the 30 laps he ran, to Edwards’ 32.45-second average over 49 laps, which Edwards said were entirely in race trim.
And Stewart sees himself at no disadvantage.
“You [media] need to look at the time sheets—[Edwards] put up a fast lap,” Stewart said. “His lap times fell off pretty hard, in the one long run that he did. And looking at that, that’s why I’m still really confident that what we did [Saturday] was the right thing. Our times don’t fall off as hard as his did.
“Whether they’ve got something figured out for [Sunday] that they didn’t show—who knows? After looking at the time sheet I felt a lot better about what I was seeing. But to look at that sheet it doesn’t tell the story of the [final] session [because] I felt like the two best cars were [Dale Earnhardt Jr.] and [Kasey Kahne]. They were 22nd and 26th and we were sitting there 24th.
“The guys I think we’re going to watch for the race win [Sunday] are the guys that were back there in the same general vicinity where I was at, looking at the times that were consistently the best in that second session. I don’t think looking at the time sheets tell the accurate story of what’s coming up [Sunday].” NASCAR.com
Martin Truex Jr. (174.808) qualified second Saturday, followed by Kasey Kahne, Kurt Busch and Brad Keselowski.
“I wish Carl wouldn’t have beat us, but it seems like he wins everything anymore,” Truex said. “I just hope I get to race those guys for the win because I’m sure they’ll be up front come the end of the day.”
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