Redemption in the Rain

After a rough weekend in Martinsville, Carl Edwards found himself on the ropes for the remaining two races in this segment of the Chase.  While not (yet) a mathematical necessity, realistically he would have to win one of those two races if he wanted to stay alive in the championship hunt.  The first of his two chances was slated to take place at Texas Motor Speedway.

Things started promising with a 2nd fastest time in the first practice.  He finished each of the three qualifying rounds in 9th, 2nd, and 9th, earning a top ten starting position and a good pit stall selection.  In the second practice session, he was only 22nd fastest, but running the fastest speed in the ten-lap averages showed solid long-run speed.  The third and final practice continued to show speed:  8th fastest, 5th in ten-lap averages.

The Texas weather was fine . . . until they played the national anthem just before the start of the Sunday Cup race.  Sprinkles turned into a steady rain that delayed the start of the race for more than five hours.

 

But once the weather cleared and the race got started, Carl ran well.  Other than during green-flag pit stops, he maintained a spot in the top ten throughout the race.  It took him only 25 laps to climb into the top five, and then he maintained that for the rest of the race.  All of tonight's pit stops were spot-on, with the 19 crew maintaining his position or gaining him a spot on every single stop.
 

The tension really ramped up on lap 255 when an accident brought out the caution.  Most of the cars, Carl included, came down pit road for a critical pit stop.  In a clutch moment, his pit crew gained him one spot, sending him back onto the track in the lead.  He restarted strong, pulling away to lead the race for all of one lap.

But then another accident and another caution set up another restart.  This time the leaders did not pit.  When they dropped the green flag, Carl had another strong restart, grabbing the lead and driving away from the rest of the field.  Nobody could reel him in.

Every Carl Edwards fan on the planet was pacing, praying, and chewing on their fingernails for the next 19 laps.  That is exactly how long it took for the clouds to open up and resume raining on the track.  It did not take long before the track was lost and the cars were directed down pit road for a red flag.  Knowing how long it took earlier to dry the track, NASCAR called the race.

Immediately after the disastrous Martinsville race, Carl called it.  He said his team would simply go to Texas and win, because that is what they had to do.  And that is exactly what they did.  Carl won at Texas.  With everything that was on the line, he stepped up and willed his Sport Clips Toyota into victory lane.
 
This sweet victory earned Carl one of the final spots in the last round of the Chase, ensuring that he would be one of the four drivers competing for the championship in two weeks at Homestead.  In the current Chase format, this is the first time Carl has made it all the way to the final round.  He currently sits 2nd on the Chase grid and 7th in the drivers' standings, 25 points behind the leader.

When you have the courage to call your shot, when you have a car with proven speed, when you have a crew who consistently puts down lightning fast pit stops, when you have a history of running well at the final racetrack on the schedule, then you know you have what it takes to be a contender for the championship.  Good luck to the 19 team!

But before any of this week's track activities got started, I had the most incredible thing happen to me.  Arris arranged for Carl to film a shoutout to me, acknowledging this blog that I write each week.  I wonder if he realizes just what these gestures mean to his fans.  I still have not been able to wipe the smile off my face.  Arris and Carl, you ROCK for taking the time to do this!

My employer posted the video on our intranet for my colleagues to view, and sent it off to our local newspaper.  As a result, I discovered that one of my colleagues is a Carl fan, and he shared with me several photographs from a pit road encounter nine years ago.  You see, I do not live in an area with a lot of devoted NASCAR fans.  We are few and far between.  So this has given me the opportunity to show people just how special NASCAR drivers are, how they connect with their fans, how they are really fun people to cheer for.

By the way, could someone tell Carl that I was not a Matt Kenseth fan?  I had not even heard of him before I started following Carl in NASCAR.  Not that Matt does not seem like a fun fellow.  Watching a Packers game with him could be a lot of fun.   But it was the Aflac duck and backflip that got me here.  And it is Carl Edwards that keeps me here.

Bitten at Martinsville

While Carl Edwards has historically struggled at Martinsville, he has learned a few techniques since his move to the Gibbs stable.  His teammates have been strong here and have passed along strategies that he have helped.  While a win might be a lot to hope for, a strong run would position him nicely in the Chase standings.

An 18th place in the first practice did not look promising, but things turned around with 12th, 9th, and 7th positions in qualifying.  His strong showing allowed him to advance through all three rounds and earn a strong starting position in the top ten.  A 7th fastest time in the second practice seemed to confirm his good fortune, but a 27th in the third and final practice cast some last minute doubts leading to the race.

The doubts were erased with a strong run during the first 20 laps, as he maintained his 7th place starting position.  When a car got into the wall on lap 21, he came down pit road for four fresh tires, fuel, and an air pressure adjustment.  But then Carl uncharacteristically was nabbed for speeding on pit road, which sent him to the tail end of the longest line for the restart.

When the race went back green on lap 27, he was 38th.  But he steadily worked his way forward, getting back into the top 20 within 30 laps.  The race ran green for the next 55 laps, but progress was harder to come by.  It took him that long to advance just five more positions.

During the debris caution on lap 131 he got fresh tires, more fuel, and a 14th place restarting position.  Another 70 laps and another debris caution found Carl sniffing the top ten from his 11th place position.  The race resumed with just over 200 laps complete, but he found it tough to make additional progress.  Over the next 150 laps, he wavered between 9th and 13th.

He was in 9th place when disaster struck.  On lap 356 he lost the right front tire, his car bouncing off the outside wall and sliding through the grass.  The damage was more than just cosmetic; suspension damage sent him behind the wall.  In the garage his team worked frantically to get him back on the track to minimize his damage to his ranking, but when he returned to the track he was 17 laps down in 36th place.  He nursed his car around the track for the next 150-ish laps, losing a few more laps.  Unable to advance his position, he finished in 36th, 23 laps down.

His finish left him 8th and last on the Chase grid and in the drivers' standings, 32 points behind the cut-off line and 39 points behind the leader.  Chances are good that he will need to win to advance.  The good news is that he has run well at the remaining two tracks in this Chase round:  Texas and Phoenix.  Time to think about a cowboy hat and a pair of six shooters.

"Stressful Stressful Stressful!"

(The title is a direct quote from Carl Edwards, the first three words he said during his after-the-race interview on television.)

I will admit it now . . . I hate restrictor plate racing.  It seems like a very expensive demolition derby, except the risk to life and limb is astronomically higher.  It makes about as much sense to me as taking the drivers out to pit road to play a game of craps.  "Oh, you rolled a 3.  Sorry, you have been eliminated from the championship hunt."  Does not sound fair to me.

My stomach is tied in knots before the haulers leave the Gibbs shop.  Once they arrive at the track, I pray they will get through practice without incident, then survive qualifying, and finally find themselves upright and in one piece when the checkered flag flies.  A good finish is a bonus.

So it is not a surprise that I was tense when Carl finished the first qualifying session in 31st.  The car had a vibration, and the crew was struggling to find and fix the cause.  Eventually they must have figured things out, though, because he was 4th fastest in the second and final practice.

In qualifying, though, he was only 13th in the first round, so he did not move on to the second and final round of qualifying.  And then, because he had received his fourth inspection warning, he lost his pit stall selection.  Fortunately he was positioned between two reasonably safe drivers and not all that far away from his teammates.

The Gibbs camp came into the race with a clear strategy to survive.  Along with two of his teammates who also had a bit of a points buffer to play with, he dropped to the rear of the field before the start of the race.  And there they stayed for the entire 192 laps of the race.  When they dropped the green flag, he was in 39th place.  Except for green-flag pit stop sequences, he never got higher than 25th place.  (He did lead a lap during one green-flag cycle, earning a point for doing so.)

During the course of the race, a couple of strong contenders lost engines, sending them to the garage and home with poor finishes, which helped give Carl a bit more wiggle room.  And oddly enough, this 'Dega race never had a "big one."  The most significant incident involved one car veering to the inside and collecting two other cars.  Let's face it, a three-car pileup is not much of a situation at a superspeedway known for accidents that ordinarily take out half a 40-car field.

As a result of that minimum bit of attrition combined with a cautious attempt to move up a bit during the last few laps, Car was able to bring his #19 Subway Toyota Camry home in 29th place.  Good enough for 7th on the Chase grid, just four measly but beautiful points ahead of the cut-off line.  He was 7th in the drives' standings before the reset, 18 points behind the leader.  After the points were reset in preparation for the next round of the Chase, he sits in 5th place based on NASCAR's tiebreaker system.

Much is being discussed about the Gibbs chosen survival strategy.  Everybody has an opinion, so I will thrown mine in to the mix.  Every type of competition requires the participants to employ a variety of skills and strategies.  In poker you not only have to know to match up the best assortment of cards and place savvy wagers, you also have to read your opponents and disguise your behavior.  In marathons, you have to keep yourself hydrated and run within yourself to have enough strength to make it to the end.  In gymnastics, you not only have to have the physical skills to perform the acrobatics and endurance to complete a full routine, you also have to have the wisdom to select skills that you are likely to be able to complete with some degree of reliability.  In other words, every sport requires a multidimensional approach for success.

The same is true in auto racing.  You need an aerodynamic car with a powerful engine.  You need a driver highly skilled in maneuvering a car around a track combined with a knowledgeable crew chief who was identify and make critical adjustments in the blink of an eye. You need a spotter with the eyes of an eagle and a pit crew with lightning-fast reflexes.  The driver needs to make split-second decisions based on the behavior of the drivers around him and his knowledge of the history of those drivers.

And you need a strategy.  Are you going to spend your money on horsepower or wind tunnel tests?  Are you going to tinker with this or upgrade that?  Are you going to go pedal to the metal at the drop of the green flag, or are you going to save your equipment so you have something left at the end of the race?  And in restrictor plate racing, are you going to avoid trouble by staying in the front or hanging in the rear?

The correct decision is the one that works.  When you go pell mell from the beginning of the race and lead the majority of laps on your way to victory, you look like a genius.  But if you burn up your tires and don't have any Goodyears left for the final restart, getting run over in the process, you are chided for not making a good decision.  

Would it have been more fun for Carl's fans if he ran in the top 3 all day?  Of course.  It would have been more fun for Carl, too.  But he did not qualify in the top 3.  Could he have gotten up there?  Or might he have fallen back into the deadly middle of the pack?  The one option he did have at his disposal was to fall back.  So he did.

And guess what . . . he lived to fight another day.  He moved on to the next round of the Chase.  A fast racecar and a bit of luck for the next three races and he could very well find himself in the hunt for the championship when the haulers roll into Homestead.  Today the Gibbs strategy gave him the chance to do exactly that.

Sometimes you are good.  Sometimes you are lucky.  And sometimes you are smart.  Whatever it takes.

Oh So Frustratingly Close

Time for a trip to Carl Edward's home track, the place where he most wants to get a victory.  His 19 car was speedy in the first practice session, posting the 3rd fastest time.  When it was time to qualify, he posted top ten spots in all three rounds, grabbing the 3rd spot in the third and final round.  But then in the second and third practice sessions, his times were only 15th best and 12th best.  I did not know what to expect when the race got underway.

Apparently I did not need to worry about the car, because it showed good speed throughout the race.  Other than during green-flag pit stops, he never fell out of the top five.  When the race first got underway he almost immediately moved up to the 2nd spot and maintained that spot for the first 40 laps.  He fell back to the 4th spot before his green-flag pit stop, but by lap 100 he was right back in 2nd place.  Over the next 75 laps he maintained a spot in the top five.

The next set of green-flag pit stops got him into the lead.  The cautions were coming so close together that there was no need for the Xfinity Camry to pit.  Carl maintained the lead for the next 50 laps.  But on a restart on lap 236, he fell to 2nd, then 3rd.  He was able to battle back into the 2nd spot but did not have enough time to reel in the race leader.

With his 2nd place finish, Carl and his team sit 5th on the Chase grid, 24 points ahead of the cutoff line.  That would be a more comfortable margin if the next race (and final race in this segment of the Chase) was not going to be a restrictor plate race.  He is 4th in the drivers' standings, 13 points behind the leader. 

Ordinarily a 2nd place result in a Chase race would be a satisfying points day, but knowing how badly Carl wants to win at his home track of Kansas just made me ache for him.  I know he must feel annoyed and frustrated.  Let's hope he turns that angst into determination to have a terrific result next weekend.