While Kyle Busch, who has won eight Sprint Cup races this year, can drive the wheels off just about anything, Carl Edwards, who has five Cup victories with Sunday’s 3M Performance 400 win at Michigan International Speedway, believes he’s the best racer in the universe, which, if Kyle thinks he is, he hasn’t publicly announced it.
Edwards, without blinking an eye, said as much at MIS following his resounding win.
“My psyche and mentality is pretty much fixed on I’m the greatest race driver that ever lived,” Edwards said. “You know what I’m saying? What helps me—I mean, if you don’t think that—that’s what David Pearson told me, if you don’t believe that, you don’t belong in the race car.”
The seventh caution of the day — prompted by Denny Hamlin’s blown engine — set up a two-lap duel between Edwards and Busch at the point. Busch’s No. 18 Toyota didn’t have nearly the juice to catch the No. 99 Ford, which had improved its lead by 0.463-seconds with one lap to race. While it was the flag stand waving the white flag, it could have just as easily been Busch as Edwards extended his advantage to 0.948-seconds at the finish.
Still, Edwards is too shrewd of a competitor to take Busch for granted.
“Kyle is really good on restarts and I wasn’t going to let him get the kind of run on me that he got on Jimmie Johnson a few weeks ago,” Edwards said. “So I just didn’t want to have to go through the pain. I did everything I could to have the best restart I could and it worked out great.”
Following the race, Busch admitted that his greatest competition now and in the Chase will be Edwards.
“Carl’s right there,” Busch said. “He has been all year. He’s the guy that we’ve got to race on these mile-and-a-half, two-mile racetracks. He’s been decent at the other race tracks too, but not as stout as he is at these — and there’s a lot of those in the Chase.
“We’ve still got some work cut out for us.”
Ragan held on to finish third, followed by Roush Fenway teammates Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth, who bounced off the wall passing Martin, now driving a Chevrolet for Dale Earnhardt Inc., on the last lap.
“We were a nine out of a 10 it seems like and those other guys were a 10 out of a 10,” Ragan said. “Just to gamble a little bit (on staying on track) we knew at worst that we would still finish in the top five. It was something to take a shot. We certainly learned from it. If we had to do it all over again, we’d probably still do it again.”
Earnhardt Jr., who appeared to have one of the strongest cars in the early going, bounced off the wall in heavy traffic moments after being passed by Edwards on the late restart. He pitted and wound up finishing 23rd.
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