Carl Edwards wins Southern 500
Carl Edwards added another one of racing’s crown jewels to his resumé.
Edwards came out first following a pit stop with eight laps left and held off Denny Hamlin on a late restart to win the caution-filled Bojangles’ Southern 500 on Sunday at Darlington Raceway. It was the second one of NASCAR’s big races he has won the season. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver won the Coca-Cola 600 back in May.
Joe Gibbs drivers swept the weekend at Darlington, with Hamlin winning the Xfinity Series race Saturday. Edwards’ victory was his second of the season and ninth top-10 finish of the year.
“This is one of the most sought after wins in motorsports,” Edwards said. “It’s an honor to drive here.”
Edwards was a big proponent of NASCAR’s new aero package, which was run for the second time this year at Darlington. The package uses less down force and puts more of the control back in the driver’s hand.
Edwards had a lot in his hands during the race after going two laps down when his car had a flat tire on lap 90.
Brad Keselowski led a race-high 144 laps and finished second. He was followed by Hamlin, Joey Logano and Harvick. Jeff Gordon, making his final Darlington start, finished 16th.
Edwards was the third-straight driver to win at Darlington in his first year with a new team, joining Matt Kenseth (2013) and Kevin Harvick (2014).
Harvick leads the points standings by 42 over Logano headed to Richmond next week. Next week’s race will be the cutoff before Chase for the Championship begins at Chicagoland the following week.
Kyle Busch locked up a spot in the Chase following his seventh-place finish.
TURNING POINT
Carl Edwards was third entering the final pit stop of the laps, but his team turned quick pit stop to get him out ahead and he never looked back.
OBSERVATIONS
Fans respond to Labor Day return: The excitement of the Southern 500 returning to Labor Day weekend was shown by the attendance for the race. The crowd was near capacity of 58,000 and it was the highest attendance since 2008.
Tire wear: With the amount of cautions, several teams went through their allotted amount of 12 sets of tires in the race.
THEY SAID IT
“It snapped pretty hard.” – Danica Patrick on hitting the wall in Turn 4 and bringing out the caution on 189.
“Lot of yellows and lot of back and forth. We just came up short.” – Brad Keselowski
“We were making mistakes. Fans love that.” – Denny Hamlin on the 18 cautions.
“Man, I loved it. This is as good as it gets. This is what it’s about: sliding cars, the tires falling off. If there’s any way we can run this in the Chase, I hope we do it.” – Carl Edwards on the areo package run in the race.
KEY NUMBERS
18: Number of cautions in the race, breaking the record of 17 set in 2009, the last first race after the track was repaved.
1: Number of laps led by Tony Stewart. It was the first laps Stewart has led since Talladega on May 3.
2: Carl Edwards’ previous best Darlington finish before Sunday.
This story was originally published September 7, 2015 at 12:11 AM.