Edwards finally breaks through at Las Vegas

Edwards finally breaks through at Las Vegas


By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service

(March 6, 2011)

LAS VEGAS—Carl Edwards found a way to put the frustration of the first two NASCAR Sprint Cup races of the season behind him
After finishing second in the Daytona 500 and having his pole-winning car knocked into the fence the following week at Phoenix, Edwards finally found victory lane—in Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Edwards took the lead from Tony Stewart during a cycle of pit stops late in the race. Stewart who had taken two tires in a track-position play on his previous stop, had to pit early for four tires during the final run. Edwards had the luxury of taking two tires on his last stop, and that gave him the margin he needed to beat fast-closing race runner-up Stewart and third-place Juan Pablo Montoya to the finish line.
The victory was the 19th of Edwards’ career.
After a penalty for dragging an air wrench from his pit box, Stewart restarted 24th on Lap 157, but a two-tire call on Lap 198 (under caution after Jeff Gordon’s Chevy pounded the Turn 4 wall), returned Stewart to the lead, and the No. 14 Chevrolet was good enough to pull away from cars with four tires.
With 40 laps left in the race, Stewart held a 3.5-second lead over Montoya, his closest pursuer.
The race went awry early for polesitter Matt Kenseth, who came to the pits with a cut tire on Lap 13 and lost a lap. During a long green-flag run that followed a restart on Lap 19, Kenseth was trapped one lap down as Stewart, then the leader, began lapping back markers.
Not until Lap 201 did Kenseth get his lap back as the lucky dog, the highest-scored lapped car. By then, Roush Fenway Racing teammate Greg Biffle also had fallen off the lead lap after running out of gas because of a pit-road fueling mistake.
Kenseth’s and Biffle’s issues, however, weren’t as dire as those of Kyle Busch, who entered the race as the series points leader but failed to leave Las Vegas in that position. The engine in Busch’s No. 18 Toyota detonated on Lap 108, spewing flames from beneath the car.
“On the restart there (on Lap 107), I was going to bide my time and try to get back through traffic with plenty of time to go, and ‘kablooey’—it just broke,” Busch said.