Carl Edwards fights back to win Dollar General 300 at Charlotte – NASCAR news
Carl Edwards showed the fighting spirit which has kept him at the top of the Sprint Cup Championship to win the Dollar General 300 in the Nationwide Series race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway on Friday, October 14, 2011.
Edwards hit the right side of his car into the wall as early as lap 32 and had to go back into the pits for lengthy repairs. He came out in 27th position on lap 45 and tried to make ground from there on. Edwards led only the final five laps off the entire
race and had some help in doing so. Teammate Trevor Bayne gave him a push which helped him overtake Kyle Busch on the final restart and he held on to take the chequered flag.
The win is Edward’s 8th in the Nationwide Series this season and the 37th of his career, tying him with Kevin Harvick on third in the all time wins list. Kyle Busch has the record with 51 wins and Mack Martin is second with 49 wins.
Kyle Busch came home in second and will know that the No. 60 Ford of Edwards is closing down on his No. 18 Toyota’s lead in the Owners’ Championship.
Trevor Bayne finished third with Elliott Sadler finishing 4th, claiming the final $100,000 Nationwide Insurance Dash4Cash bonus and cut the series lead of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. to 15 points after Stenhouse finished 9th. Brian Scott rounded off the top 5.
The race results could have been completely different had Brad Keselowski not been hit by a flat tyre. Keselowski was dominated the field before that point and looked to be continuing in his form from Kansas where he led 173 of the 200 laps.
Following a restart on Lap 136, Keselowski took off and opened a wide margin on the rest of the racing pack. On turn 2 on Lap 171, Keselowski slowed down and radioed his crew that he had a flat tyre. He then spun out and had to go back into the pits for
a tyre change.
Keselowski led 119 laps in the race and managed to claw his way back up to a 6th place finish in the race. Justin Allgaier came home in 7th with pole-sitter Paul Menard finishing in 8th.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. will be disappointed after he led the race at one point and was in the mix for a top 3 finish. He finished 9th with Brian Vickers completing the top 10.
The race for the Nationwide Series is now closer than ever with just 15 points separating the top two with 3 races to go and Stenhouse will know that he cannot afford any further mistakes with Elliott Sadler slowly cutting down on his lead.
The next race is the O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge at the Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday, November 5, 2011.
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