FORT WORTH – Late in Saturday night’s Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway, Carl Edwards found himself contending for the win and his first top-10 finish for Joe Gibbs Racing.
But, ultimately Edwards had to settle for a 10th place finish in the seventh race of the season after the handling dissipated sending the No. 19 Stanley Racing For A Miracle Toyota Camry backwards thirty laps from the finish.
Still, the result was something to build on for a season that has been painted with high expectations, yet delivered mediocre results.
And while the Columbia, Missouri native seemed somewhat disappointed with the final effort, seeing several children from his sponsor’s charitable program quickly put things into perspective post-race.
“I just appreciate Stanley being a part of this. This is a big race for us,” said Edwards. “We had a good run, and we just that last restart kind of got us, but the kids were it was cool, got out of the car and saw the kids over there at the pit box, seemed like they had a good time. It’s not a win, but for us it is our first top 10 and we dug hard all day, and we had a lot of fun.”
Edwards has admitted over the weeks that he was trying too hard to live up to the hype since joining Joe Gibbs Racing fourth team at the beginning of the season. Taking a new more conservative approach, Edwards seems to have his ship (finally) headed in the right direction.
“It was a pretty good day for us getting our first top-10 of the year,” said crew chief Darian Grubb. “It’s kind of sad to say in race seven. We had a really strong Toyota Camry all day. It was pretty stout, racing for Stanley this weekend with the kids on the pit box the whole time, we really wanted to get that million dollars for them.
“I thought we were in good shape, we were racing for second there on the last restart and not sure what happened with a set of tires or whatever, but went backwards to 10th.”
While it was crucial for Edwards and Grubb to deliver their first top-10 together, the flashes of light that the team did show Saturday night wasn’t enough to elevate the team into contender mode moving forward on a weekly basis.
At least not yet.
“It means a lot, but it’s still frustration,” adds Grubb on the scenario. “We feel like this should have been our top-three. We feel like we had the car that could have been right there in third at least. I don’t know if we had the speed to win, but we were definitely in contention for that at the end. The pit crew did an awesome job and fighting all day. Wish we could have finished there.”
It goes without saying that there will still likely be some bumps in the road as the season progresses, but the team has some momentum to carry to Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway next weekend, where Edwards is the defending champion of the 500-lap slugfest.
Gaining three positions in the standings to 14th following their 10th-place outing certainly puts the JGR inside the safety net window of the sacred top-16, but earning his 24th Cup victory next weekend certainly would allow more room for error for the growing team as they still continue to adapt to their new surroundings.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
