This race weekend started out good for Carl Edwards even before the cars hit the track. Several weeks ago, in the All-star race, Carl's highest finish for a Toyota earned him the right to grace the cover of a soon-to-be-released video game. At the Sonoma track, they unveiled the final artwork. If you have not already seen Carl's visage on the video game case, here it is:
But they did not go all the way to California to unveil a video game cover. There was a race to prepare for, after all. Carl led the majority of the first practice, finishing the session in 5th place. Similarly, he finished the second and final practice session in 4th place. Apparently they came ready to go fast!
Qualifying went even better. The #19 Stanley Camry posted the fastest time in the first round of qualifying, easily advancing to the second and final round. And in the second round, POLE!!!!! This was Carl's third pole this season, the most poles earned by any driver this year.
Once Sunday rolled around and the race got underway, Carl started alongside of AJ Allmendinger. In spite of the Dinger's strong road racing skills, Carl managed to hold him off and maintain the lead for the first nine laps. The two of them made their green flag pit stop on the same lap, and Carl's top notch pit crew got them out first. Once everything cycled back around after everybody completed their green flag pit stops on lap 32, Carl was back in the lead.
You could tell that Carl had a strong car underneath him. The set up was allowing him to drive the car out of the corners better than anybody else. Even Darrell Waltrip said that Carl was "driving as strong as steel and as smooth as silk."
At the first caution on lap 47, he once again won the race off pit road. However, several cars stayed out because they had pitted under green just before the caution. He restarted in 7th. And that was the beginning of the various strategies that would change the race.
Before the next caution on lap 88, he moved up one stop to 6th. On pit road, he moved up another two spots to 4th. With one car not pitting, he restarted 5th. And when other cars could not getting going, he fell back to 6th.
On lap 97, Carl's Toyota ended up as the meat in a three-way sandwich, never a good thing on a road course. He made contact with Junior on his inside, but it did not appear to affect the handling of his car. Before the end of the race, he had climbed back up to 4th, notching yet another top five finish. Had it not been for the various strategies in place, he might have well contended for the win, as his car was consistently one of the fastest on the track.
His high finishing position nudged him up a bit in the standings. On the Chase grid, he moved up from 3rd to 2nd. Only Kyle, with three wins to Carl's two, is ahead of him. In the drivers' standings, he moved up from 4th to 3rd.
Coming off a couple of poor finishes, the 19 team headed to the Irish Hills of Michigan. Once again, they unloaded a hotrod, finishing the first practice in 3rd place.
Qualifying continued to look promising. They ended the first qualifying round in 3rd and the second qualifying round in 2nd. It looked like a pole was possible. But during the third round, Carl admitted to trying too hard and overdriving the car, ending up with the 11th fastest qualifying time. For the third and final practice session, they tried a new setup that left them with the 17th fastest time. Eh, no sweat! It is easy to try something new when you have a top-notch setup to fall back on.
Once the green flag dropped, he began moving forward. By lap 35, he was in 7th place. During a restart on lap 51, he (and his teammate Denny Hamlin) had some problems with second gear, causing him to drop back to 13th. And the next restart saw him fall back to 17th place.
During the next caution he misunderstood radio instructions from his crew chief, Dave Rogers, resulting in him staying out when they planned on pitting. The confusion got him some track position, as he restarted 17th. Unfortunately, though, it left him on worn tires and lower on fuel than the other cars. But what could have been a problem turned into a positive, as his Subway Camry came to life. He was back in the top ten by lap 119. The next caution occurred at just the right time to level the playing field, and he went into and came off of pit road in 8th place.
By lap 154, he was in the top five, but that is about where he stayed. He fell back to 7th, restarted in 5th and then 4th, and finished the race in 6th. A good, solid top ten, almost a top five, after a couple of weeks of poor finishes. He maintained the 4th spot in the drivers' standings and the 3rd position on the Chase grid. Now time for a week off to refresh and regroup.
Usually the focus here is on Carl, but this week warrants mention of two of his Xfinity teammates. First, Erik Jones drove with a heavy heart, after his father passed away from cancer on Tuesday. Losing my dad when I was 56 was devastating, and my dad lived a good, long life to the age of 88. Coping with the death of a parent when you are 20 is beyond my ability to comprehend. Prayers and all good wishes to the family.
Another Xfinity teammate had a weekend deserving of a shout out. Although everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the "other 19" Arris Toyota found success, it has always seemed just out of reach for Daniel Suarez. He did do his best to put it out of reach on Saturday in Michigan, too. Apparently lead feet run in the 19 family, because Daniel Suarez got nabbed speeding on pit road. The resulting drive-through penalty put him well back in the field. Thankfully he made that error early in the race, giving him plenty of time to drive himself back up to the leaders. With ten laps to go, he found himself in 2nd place behind Kyle Busch. He crept closer and closer to the leader until he was right on his tail with two laps to go. He made a clean pass to take the white flag in the lead and held him off to the finish line.
Daniel was understandably at a loss for words in the winner's circle, in both English AND Spanish! To show just what an amazing young man he is, one of his first thoughts was for his teammate, as Daniel dedicated his win in honor of Erik Jones' father. This was Daniel's first win as well as the first win by a Mexican in any of NASCAR's three national series. His win more than likely earned him a spot in the Xfinity Chase, as he now sits 2nd on the Chase grid and 1st in the driver's standings. He planted himself firmly in the conversation of championship contenders. How much fun would it be to have two 19-car champions in the same year!
Sorry for the delay this week, folks. First the Pocono rain pushed the race back to Monday. It was painful to leave for work that morning, but the DVR was set. Once the green flag dropped, I avoided all forms of news and social media. Racing home from work (see what I did there?), I attempted to turn on my television. But Time Warner Cable decided that the middle of the race would be a good time for an outage of cable television AND internet service, an outage that lasted for 11 hours. Thankfully I was able to find and record a rebroadcast of the race. Now that I have finally gotten to see the race and get caught up on social media, here I am!
Weather at Pocono can be as tricky as the triangular track, but this time around it seemed to be particularly troublesome. Various combinations of rain and fog resulted in delays and curtailments of practice as well as the race itself. The first practice lasted for a grand total of eight minutes, enough time for 70% of the cars to put down a lap or two. Out of that minimal bit of practice, Carl managed to snag the fastest speed. That did not tell us much, but it did tell us that they unloaded with a good setup.
The weather did allow for a complete qualifying session, and Carl made it through all three segments, claiming the 5th spot on the starting grid. And then in the final practice, he was 12th fastest.
During the race, he ran between 2nd and 13th place. Most of the time was spent in the back half of the top ten, from 5th to 9th. He lost spots on a couple of shaky restarts, but both the driver and the pit crew avoided costly pit road mistakes this weekend. And although there were quite a number of crashes during the race, those mercifully avoided him, too. After a couple of races with poor results, he got himself back into the top ten with an 8th place finish. He maintained the 3rd spot on the Chase grid and moved up one spot in the drivers' standings to sit in 4th.
