Victory Once Again!

Once again, the #19 car unloaded with plenty of speed, claiming the 4th spot in the first practice and 5th fastest in the final practice.  A rainy Friday cancelled qualifying, so the starting grid was set by the speeds from the first practice.

Carl started the race from the 4th spot.  As the green flag dropped, he was directly behind Joey Logano, who did not get a good start.  Carl fell back a few spots, still in the top ten, though, and steadily made up positions.  By lap 64, he had moved into the lead.

Except for briefly losing the lead to Kyle Busch due to positioning coming off of a yellow-flag pit stop on lap 158, he led the race until Kevin Harvick took over on lap 231.  For most of the rest of the race, his car did not seem to have the same rocketship speed that it had showed up to that point.  But he managed to continue to run in the top 5.

Then as the laps were winding down, the cautions were picking up.  Perhaps that gave Crew Chief Dave Rogers enough opportunities to work on Carl's car, because he started moving forward again.  With less than 50 laps to go, two Gibbs cars found themselves running first and second.  Kyle Busch had the lead; Carl was stalking him.

As the laps ticked down, it seemed that Carl would not be able to catch Kyle in time.  But on the very last lap, he was right there behind him.  And in the last turn, he executed a classic bump to the back of Kyle's car.  Not enough to wreck him, just enough to get him loose.  Carl dove down on the inside and drove away to his second consecutive victory.  That was the first time in history that the Richmond race was won with a last lap pass.  My apologies to my neighbors for the shrieks of joy.

Video of Last Laps and Backflip

Once again, Carl led the most laps. Once again, Carl celebrated with a back flip.  Once again, Carl drove his Camry to Victory Lane.  Once again, Carl and his crew celebrated with confetti and champagne.  Once again, Carl put a checkered flag sticker on his race car.  Now Carl is at the top of the Chase grid, the best of the three two-win drivers.  And he is at the top of the drivers' standings, with a 7 point lead over his closest rival.  He has led more laps at Texas, Bristol, and Richmond than he did in the 2014 and 2015 seasons put together.  Ah, it is a good time to be a Carl Edwards fan!

I wish we were going to another short track next week instead of a high-risk crap shoot super speedway.