I’m not sure anything can be done to make the series’ trip to Indianapolis anything other than coma-inducing (that’s a story for another column), but it’s likely to produce a similar result at Richmond and Dover, both of which are a mile or less in length and lend themselves to close racing and contact when the action gets frantic. “I’m probably not going to forget about this one for quite a while”. Full-time Xfinity driver Erik Jones took home the $100,000 check today at Bristol after a insane four-laps-to-go restart that featured a insane back-and-forth fight for the top of the podium.
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It was Edwards’ second consecutive pole in the Sprint Cup Series, his third pole at Bristol and the 18th of his career. More importantly, he has consistently started in the back and moved to the front during the race at Bristol, so his 32nd-place qualifying effort just means he has a ton of upside through place differential. In fact, he made it look easy. Edwards would lead 276 laps from the pole and survive a couple late cautions and restarts to capture the win in the Food City 500. Finishing second was Dale Earnhardt, Jr. followed by Kurt Busch, rookie Chase Elliott and Trevor Bayne in fifth.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s entries in NASCAR’s Xfinity Series are running so well that Carl Edwards said he had thought about driving one of them, but then noted there would have to be special circumstances for him to return to the series where he spent seven years. Now we’re in the Chase, and we can go have some fun.
Today’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Bristol 500 race has a start time schedule of 1:00pm eastern time on television, and a green flag start of 1:13pm, airing on TV channel FOX. We got to start on the pole and you have an advantage on pit road and that track position. Their other teammate, Denny Hamlin, is a former Bristol victor who finished third in NASCAR’s most recent visit last August. He has just two top-10 finishes – second place in 2011 and third in 2012 – scattered among 10 finishes of 20th or worse. 11-14, going winless until No. 14 Pocono.Joey Logano should have no problem being aggressive enough to conquer Bristol and he has proven he is tough to beat at Bristol, having won two of the last three races held here.
None of it ultimately mattered with Edwards out front.
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“Samantha is not necessarily a fan of it and I’ve talked to her about it a little bit and she’s just like, ‘I’ll be there when the time comes, but don’t tell me, ‘” Busch said. “Obviously, all the JGR cars are fast right now”. That was evident on two restarts in the final 10 laps, when he jumped out and wasn’t challenged in earning his 26th career win. As the auto would run more and more laps it would get tighter and tighter, that’s the weirdest thing that I’ve felt all day and all weekend we haven’t had that problem.
