Carl Edwards beats Kyle Busch to win Nashville 300 Nationwide Series race – NASCAR news
Carl Edwards made a brilliant pass over Kyle Busch to take the victory by more than half a second in the NASCAR Nationwide Series race, Nashville 300 held at the Nashville Superspeedway on Saturday.
The first half of the race was slowed down by the first and only caution, but the second half was doomed by number of warnings. Edwards and Busch toggled the lead runs between them during the second half when yellow and green flags dropped one by one.
Edwards caused an intense situation being at the lead and gained half a second lead over Busch, with just 10 laps on the countdown.
He sustained the gap in the final laps and Edwards was far ahead from Busch to give a tough time for a win. The top-five was completed by Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
The race was a tug of war Edwards and Busch, where the third place finisher Keselowski was seven seconds off Edwards’ pace.
Edwards stated during post-race press meeting, “That was really good racing. It was as clean as we could race. It was really hard racing between Kyle and Brad and me. I didn’t know how that was going to end up. Everybody was using every trick they
could.”
The race winner, Edwards said he once bumped into the side of Busch’s car during a side draft move, but the rest of the time, they ran clear apart from each other. As a matter of fact, Busch did not have a strong car to hit a challenge for Edwards
during the few final laps of the race.
“We lacked a little bit of lack of everything,” Busch said. “A little aero, a little chassis. We weren’t getting the car to turn down the straightaway. We worked our guts off to try to make changes to it. We just didn’t quite have enough today.”
The second runner-up Keselowski explained and praised Roush Fenway Ford’s power play on the track. He felt that RFR Fords were super fast and a man like Carl Edwards in the driving seat will finally find a way to manage a win on the day.
Carl Edwards did his signature back-flip and ran into the fans to celebrate his win.
Justin Allgaier and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. are tied at the same spot on top in Nationwide Series point standings list, followed by Jason Leffler and Reed Sorenson. The top seven spots covered by the Sprint Cup stars are separated by seven points whereas
the regular runners of Nationwide are struggling to manage a win against senior Series drivers.
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