Edwards notches first road-course victory at Sonoma
June 22, 2014
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
SONOMA,
Calif.—A well-timed caution helped get Carl Edwards to the front of the
field, and the driver of the No. 99 Roush Fenway Ford did the rest.
Edwards
passed Marcos Ambrose for the lead moments after a restart on Lap 86
and subsequently held off a charging Jeff Gordon to win Sunday’s
Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma
Raceway.
The
victory was Edwards second of the season—guaranteeing him a spot in the
Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, provided he finishes in the top 30 in
points after race No. 26
and attempts to qualify for every race. It was the 23rd win of his
career, and first Sprint Cup win on a road course.
Gordon
finished second, .591 seconds behind Edwards. The runner-up result was
Gordon’s fifth at Sonoma, matching his number of victories at the
1.99-mile road course.
The triumph had special meaning for Edwards precisely because it was Gordon who was chasing him to the finish line.
“That’s
a moment I’ll never forget, to be standing in Victory Lane and to have
held off Jeff Gordon, with all the success he’s had here and in our
sport,” Edwards said after
climbing from his car. “It’s just really, really special.
“I’m
living proof right here that, whatever it is you’re doing, just keep
doing it, and don’t ever give up, because somehow things can work out.
I’m just very fortunate.”
Long
before he made his Sprint Cup debut in 2004, Edwards had watched Gordon
dominate road races at the tricky, technical track in wine country.
“Literally,
I’m a fan of this sport, and I grew up watching Jeff Gordon go through
those esses and watching how he drove his car, so to be able to hold him
off like that means
a lot,” Edwards said.
“I’m
glad there wasn’t one or two more laps in the race, because I don’t know
if it would have worked that way, but it definitely meant a lot to have
Jeff Gordon in my mirror.”
Dale
Earnhardt Jr. ran third, his best-ever road course result, followed by
pole winner Jamie McMurray and Paul Menard. Kasey Kahne, Jimmie Johnson,
Marcos Ambrose, Greg Biffle
and Clint Bowyer completed the top 10.
Bowyer
and Ambrose led the field to green on Lap 80, after Matt Kenseth’s
brutal contact with the tire barriers in the esses brought out the
fourth caution of the afternoon.
Kenseth’s
No. 20 Toyota spun out of control from contact with Dale Earnhardt
Jr.’s No. 88 Chevrolet, which bounced off the curbing and into the side
of Kenseth’s car.
“My bad--I hit the curb and ran into him,” Earnhardt said on his radio.
What
happened before the previous caution, however, was the crux of the race.
Edwards, Ambrose and Bowyer all came to pit road right before NASCAR
called a caution for debris
in Turn 10 on Lap 71. That enabled them to stay out under the yellow
and propelled them to the front of the field.
Edwards was able to stay there, despite heavy pressure fron Gordon in the closing laps.
In fact, Gordon said a mistake in Turn 4 six laps before the finish may have cost him the race.
“Gosh, I
wish I could have had those last five or six laps to do over again,”
Gordon said. “I started overdriving it a little bit trying to catch him
and making a few mistakes,
and I made one in particular that really cost me.
“I
think if I had just stayed smooth and stuck with it—looked like his car
really started falling off those last couple laps, and I might have had a
shot at least putting more
pressure on Carl to force him to make a mistake or maybe get a run
inside of him.”
There
were significant fireworks, however, before that final run. Bowyer
started losing positions after the restart on Lap 80 as Edwards surged
into second place. Johnson passed
the No. 15 Toyota entering Turn 11 on Lap 81, and Bowyer, who had a
tire going down, spun after contact from the front bumper of McMurray’s
Chevy.
With
nowhere to go on the inside of the corner, Kevin Harvick slammed into
Bowyer. Harvick had one of the fastest cars on Sunday but had gotten
mired in traffic because of
a slow stop on pit road before a restart on Lap 75.
The wreck dropped Harvick to 20th at the finish, but Bowyer rallied for his 10th-place result.
Notes:
Edwards’ victory was the first at Sonoma for a Ford driver since Ricky
Rudd took the checkered flag in 2002 ... Edwards’ first road-course
triumph also extended the
streak of consecutive different winners at the 1.99-mile road course to
10.
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