Edwards Breaks 52-Race Winless Streak With Michigan Victory Sunday

BROOKLYN, Mich. — The state of Michigan still needs rain, but Carl Edwards ended his personal drought Sunday at Michigan Int’l Speedway with a hard-fought victory in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Citizens Bank 400.
It was the 16th Cup victory at MIS for car owner Jack Roush and the first for Edwards, ending a personal streak of 52 Cup races without a victory after he won on Nov. 6, 2005, at Texas.
It wasn’t an easy victory, however. Like the drivers who finished second and third, Edwards had to drive from the back to win it.
He was penalized for speeding on pit road and went to the back of the line of lead-lap cars.
For a time, Edwards admitted that he had concerns about being caught from behind.
“Our car was good enough that it made it back up to the front,” Edwards said of his Office Depot Ford. “At the end there, Martin Truex was just amazingly fast, and he’s been on a roll lately, so it was really great to beat him in a head-to-head race.”
Edwards credited lessons in patience long-learned in helping him weather the winless streak.
“I learned through trial and a lot of error that you can’t make things happen faster than they’re going to happen, and you can only do the best job you can,” he said.
Edwards said that patience was taxed late in the race as Truex was closing in.
“To me, second place would’ve felt the same as chopping off my arm today. I wanted to win; that’s it.”
Behind the winner, runner-up Truex and third-place Tony Stewart had to scramble for their finishes as well.
Truex, caught up in a seven-car melee on the backstretch on lap 76, rode the high groove to the runner-up spot in the Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Boat Chevrolet.
Along the way he both brushed and hit the wall, which was seldom more than a foot away from the concrete through the turns.
“With 10 laps to go, I scraped the wall a little then I really hit it and pushed the right-front fender in,” Truex said. “We were definitely faster than Carl (Edwards) for awhile. I knew one thing, we had a good race car and we were going to battle as hard as we had to to get back up front.”
For Stewart, it was a good day despite no trip to victory lane.
He passed 40 cars on the race track to get to third place at the finish after two days of frustration.
“I’m extremely exciting after not qualifying well on Friday (41st) and what happened on Saturday,” Stewart said.
In the final practice on Saturday, Stewart crashed the Home Depot Chevrolet, requiring the crew to replace the right-front fender.
“I held back at the start when we crossed the start-finish line so I could actually start 43rd,” he said. “We started the day two strikes down, and the car was really tight at the start. It never got as good as it was Saturday, but when you take a car from 43rd place to third, it had to be pretty good.”
For much of the first half of the race, it appeared that Chevrolet was destined to win at MIS for the first time in 12 Nextel Cup races.
That possibility still existed seven laps from the end with defending Nextel Cup champion Jimmie Johnson running third, but that’s where it ended.
Johnson’s Lowe’s Chevrolet ran out of fuel and was relegated to 19th at the finish. To that point, Johnson had led 56 of the 200 laps, including 50 of the first 130 circuits.
Hendrick Racing teammate Jeff Gordon, who wrestled a loose DuPont Chevrolet to ninth place, led 16 laps.