Carl Edwards Dominates the Food City 500

Originally written for CLNS Radio.

Carl Edwards dominated the Food City 500 to pick up the victory on Sunday afternoon from Bristol Motor Speedway.

Edwards started on the pole and led a race-high 276 laps.  Edwards said this victory was because of his team’s continued hard work.

 

Photo courtesy Adam Niemeyer

“There were so many different things happening out there,” Edwards said.  “Different guys were fast at different times.  These guys have been working really hard.”

Edwards was the only Joe Gibbs Racing car to run a clean race.  Denny Hamlin made contact on pit road, and Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch had multiple tire problems.  Edwards said his team was concerned about his teammates’ tire problems.

“There was some concern, but for some reason…we didn’t have any of those issues.”

“Now we’re in the Chase and we can go have some fun.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. came back to finish second after a dead battery at the start of the race put him two laps down.  Earnhardt said his team got him back into the race and that he used luck to get up front.

“We had a dead battery at the start of the race,” Earnhardt said.  “That cost us two laps early in the race, but we worked really hard, [crew chief] Greg Ives did a great job helping us get our laps back.”

“We got a lot of luck on those last several restarts; we restarted on the outside.  The car was about a 10th- to 15th-place car, just got lucky on those last restarts where we lined up.”

Unofficial results:

1. Carl Edwards

2. Dale Earnhardt Jr.

3. Kurt Busch

4. Chase Elliott

5. Trevor Bayne

6. Matt DiBenedetto

7. Kevin Harvick

8. Clint Bowyer

9. Ryan Newman

10. Joey Logano

11. Ryan Blaney

12. Greg Biffle

13. Jamie McMurray

14. Martin Truex Jr.

15. Paul Menard

16. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

17. Kasey Kahne

18. Brad Keselowski

19. AJ Allmendinger

20. Denny Hamlin

21. Chris Buescher

22. Landon Cassill

23. Jimmie Johnson

24. Casey Mears

25. Ty Dillon

26. Austin Dillon

27. Danica Patrick

28. Cole Whitt

29. Michael McDowell

30. Brian Scott

31. Michael Annett

32. Jeffrey Earnhardt

33. Josh Wise

34. Aric Almirola

35. Kyle Larson

36. Matt Kenseth

37. Regan Smith

38. Kyle Busch

39. David Ragan

40. Reed Sorenson

Photo courtesy Matt Sullivan/Getty Images

Thanks to Adam Neimeyer for the picture of Carl Edwards from the race on Sunday.  For more stuff by Adam, check out his blog.