Carl Edwards wins 2016 Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway

On an afternoon where his three teammates experienced myriad issues, Carl Edwards had a near-perfect race starting on the pole, leading 276 laps and winning Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Edwards’s victory was his first of the season and gave Joe Gibbs Racing its fourth in eight 2016 races. As dominant as he was, Edwards had to withstand a pair of restarts with less than 10 laps remaining. But each time he got the better jump and quickly distanced himself from the field, winning by nearly a 1-second margin.

“There was some concern, but for some reason with our car we didn’t have any of those issues,” Edwards said. “... It was just a good day.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. placed second, with Kurt Busch third, rookie Chase Elliott finishing a career-best fourth and Trevor Bayne fifth.

“There were so many different things happening out there,” Edwards said. “Different guys were fast at different times. Kurt has those restarts figured out. He was tough. Just awesome. This is a real testament to my team.”

Edwards’ teammates Kyle Busch, who had won the previous two events, Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin entered as the co-favorites Sunday, but all dealt with repeated tire failures causing each to hit the wall several different times.

Hamlin finished 20th, Kenseth 36th and Busch 38th.

“I don’t know why, I’m not a tire expert; just blew a right front-tire two different times, two different corners,” said Kenseth, who led 142 laps. “We weren’t having any big handling problems or brakes hot. I don’t know why. Hopefully we’ll get it figured out for next time.”

The JGR trio were among several who experienced a litany of issues. That included Earnhardt, who had to overcome a two-lap deficit when his car stalled on the opening lap. The issue was identified as a dead battery.

“I was warming the brakes up like I always do, and apparently I applied too much pressure and it killed the motor,” Earnhardt said. “... We had about a 10th‑place car. We weren’t really that good all day. We tried a setup that we’ve never really ran here before, just trying to learn a little something going forward, and we’ll go home and science it out a little bit.”

Matt DiBenedetto finished sixth, a career-best result, while Kevin Harvick was seventh, Clint Bowyer eighth, Ryan Newman ninth, and Joey Logano 10th.

The next race is April 24 at Richmond International Raceway. Kurt Busch is the defending winner.