Carl Edwards bumps past Kyle Busch on final lap for Richmond win
— -- RICHMOND, Va. -- Carl Edwards bumped teammate Kyle Busch off his racing line in the last turn and passed him to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Richmond International Raceway on Sunday.
Edwards, who had fallen nearly 1.5 seconds behind his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate after a restart with 36 laps to go, gradually ran him down until the final lap. Then he slipped underneath Busch, a master blocker in late-race situations, and nudged him just enough to allow Edwards to get inside him for his second consecutive victory. It was the fourth in a row and fifth in nine races for the Gibbs stable.
"Kyle's an amazing teammate, and it's like he got really slow there at the end," Edwards said. "Something happened that last lap. It's like his rear tires went off or something, and he went down into [turn] one, and I dove it in, and I got to him, and I thought, 'Man, I've got something here.' Then he went to get down to the bottom to park it in three and four, and I'd already decided to go down there, so I thought, 'Man, I'm going to give him a little nudge.'
"We've both got wins. We're racing for fun and getting these trophies. Just an awesome day."
After falling so far behind, Edwards was surprised to finally find himself in position to challenge for the victory.
"Man, I didn't think we had anything. Kyle was just so good for that run. I was just doing everything I could. He never spun his tires," he said. "If Dave [crew chief Rogers] hadn't screamed at me to just go get him, I don't know if I would have dove it in there that hard."
Busch seemed less than amused after being denied his third victory in the past four races.
"We just kind of gave it up a little bit there on the last lap, but I guess that's racing, and we move on," he said. "... We had a really great car. ... We were fast, maybe not as good as Carl was on the long runs, but we did everything right, everything we were supposed to do."
Jimmie Johnson finished third, followed by Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne and pole-sitter Kevin Harvick.
The race was the first since 1997 that was scheduled for during the day at Richmond, and the racing made a huge fan of Johnson.
"We had multiple lanes that laid the rubber in the race track, and we didn't have all those marbles build up on the outside, where it really limited your opportunities up high," he said. "It was fun. The cars were slipping and sliding. There was a ton of falloff. I enjoyed the long runs. I really like sizing up guys that I'm racing with and seeing how that works out. And then, at the end, we had a bunch of short runs."
Kahne was trying to hang on to a good finish at the end and missed the drama ahead of him.
"I didn't watch," he said. "I wish I would have. It sounded like a great battle."
Edwards dominated the first half of the race by leading 120 of the first 200 laps, and he continued to lead until Kevin Harvick slipped underneath him with 170 laps to go. Edwards faded for a time but wound up leading seven times for a race-high 151 laps.
Seven other drivers also led, with Busch, Harvick, Kurt Busch and Johnson leading for at least 44 laps.
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