Carl Edwards could see Kyle Busch ahead of him in the waning laps of Sunday’s NASCAR race at Richmond International Raceway and what went through Edwards’ mind was that he needed to do everything possible to win, not that the two were Joe Gibbs Racing teammates.
Carl Edwards crossed no line in winning at Richmond
Although it came at the expense of his teammate, Carl Edwards did what he needed to do to win Sunday.
Brian Lawdermilk/Getty Images
A mindset that became obvious when Edwards executed a textbook bump-and-run on the final lap, nudging Busch up the track and opening a hole for Edwards to drive through. Edwards won, Busch finished second and JGR had scored its fourth consecutive victory.
Although the tactic in and of itself wasn’t controversial -- it’s part of the ethos of short-track racing where physicality is accepted as long as it doesn’t entail completely taking someone out -- that both Edwards and Busch are aligned with the same car owner added a layer of intrigue of whether Edwards crossed some sort of mythical line.
"I know Kyle was probably disappointed, but it's short track racing." -Dale Earnhardt Jr.
He didn’t. A fact several drivers reasserted when they defended Edwards’ actions afterward.
“It was awesome,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “I know Kyle was probably disappointed, but it’s short track racing. The fans come to see something like that. If you can reach them, if you can get to them on the last lap you better be leaning on them a little bit. He didn’t wreck him; as long as you don’t put a guy in the fence.
“I think the fans really enjoy it and that has always been good for the sport for 50 years.”
Even Denny Hamlin, a teammate of Edwards and Busch, agreed with what had transpired because Edwards followed the universal code drivers have when racing a teammate.
“Every driver is trying to win for themselves,” Hamlin said. “Ultimately, if you give yourself an opportunity to win [and] you know you’re not going to wreck your teammate, I think it’s okay. That’s the biggest thing -- you can’t wreck a teammate for a race win, that’s for sure.”
And yet while Edwards may have been in the right and says he would feel no differently had the roles been reversed, when there is human emotion involved it complicates matters. Greatly.
Understandably, Busch wasn’t pleased with Edwards’ forcefulness.
“It was just racing, I guess,” said Busch, who later avoided answering two questions about the topic during his post-race press conference.
How the sequence of events played out means JGR’s weekly Tuesday morning competition meeting should not be lacking in tension nor uneasiness. One side of the table is Edwards, who for the second week in a row celebrated victory. Across from him is Busch, known for being temperamental.
What Joe Gibbs is tasked with is mending fences, appeasing Busch’s resentment while also recognizing that Edwards did no wrong. So how does the three-time Super Bowl winning head coach plan to restore unity within the organization that bears his name?
“When something like this happens, I don’t think there’s a game plan for it,” Gibbs said. “You have no real organized way of handling it. What you do is you start out and work your way through it. That’s what we’ll do.”
Working in JGR’s favor that it can move past Sunday is that this isn’t unfamiliar territory for the four-car team.
Despite a pact to steadfastly work together to ensure a JGR victory in the season-opening Daytona 500, Hamlin swooped by Matt Kenseth off Turn 4 with the checkered flag in sight. Hamlin’s explanation was similar to Edwards’: He had a chance to win and owed it to himself and his crew to exhaust every possible option.
And Busch isn’t immune to placing his own interests ahead of his teammates. Eschewing an agreement that called for him and Kenseth to work together on restarts, Busch instead elected to have Kenseth line up in the unenviable position of restarting in the outside lane with 12 laps remaining in the April 2 event at Martinsville Speedway.
That decision essentially decided the outcome, as Busch restarted smoothly and drove away while Kenseth couldn’t get going due to a lack of grip and slid to 15th. What was Busch’s rationale for taking the preferred inside lane? Winning, of course.
“I think we did the right thing,” Busch said in the post-race winner’s press conference. “There towards the end it was time to go -- crunch time, right?”
Kenseth didn’t fault Busch’s choice, saying that “common sense” dictated such machinations. He understood like most do in the garage that when a victory hangs in the balance, you can only do so much to help your teammate.
The very creed Edwards exemplified on Sunday.
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