AVONDALE, Az. – On the clutches of a 1-2-3 finish in Saturday’s NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Phoenix (Ariz.) International Raceway, Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) nearly pulled off a weekend sweep as Carl Edwards and Kevin Harvick duked it out for the win in Sunday’s Good Sam 500.
Edwards came up 0.010 seconds short of his first win of the season, the same margin as the thrilling battle for the season-opening Daytona 500, where JGR teammate Denny Hamlin scored his first Great American Race triumph, but the photo finish was enough to leave virtually everyone speechless.
Again.
For the second time in four weeks, a replay cemented the official winner in NASCAR’s top division, and while NASCAR’s new aerodynamic package may not have quite lived up to its expectations.
A caution with five laps remaining in the 312-lap run sent much of the lead lap field scattering down to pit road for tires and a splash of fuel. Meanwhile, Kevin Harvick, the master of Phoenix stayed out on older tires alongside fellow Chevrolet compadres Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Austin Dillon.
And despite a bump-and-run attempt on Harvick on the last corner of the last lap, Edwards scored his best finish of the season, but, more importantly continuing a trend that the Joe Gibbs Racing organization remains the hottest team on the circuit.
“Well, I’m really proud of my guys for giving me a shot to win the race,” said Edwards. “We were a third-place car there at the end. Dale and Kevin were both really fast. Caution came out, Dave rolled the dice, and we got a shot at it. We made him work for it. That’s more than we’ve been able to do here the last few times.
“Just a lot of fun. I really wish it would have worked out a little bit differently, but it’s a good race. I ran into him about as hard as I thought I could without wrecking him, and it ended up being a drag race. It was kind of fun coming to the line because I thought, man, I got him, and then he doored me real hard and then he got a little run and then I tried to door him and slow him down, but it just didn’t work.”
It goes without saying that Edwards easily could have dumped Harvick, but in typical JGR fashion, Edwards showed class in and out of the car.
“Everybody works hard here and if we would’ve had one more lap, I could have passed him clean, but it just wasn’t going to work without bumping him,” added Edwards. “So I decided to hit him as hard as I did. I really didn’t want to wreck him, but I thought I moved him enough to get by, but that’s just racing.”
JGR teammate Kyle Busch’s fourth-place finish tied him in the series championship standings with Harvick. After four races, JGR four-car army sits first, fifth, sixth and 16th in the standings.
Traditionally, Phoenix is not one of the best tracks for JGR, but much like last year, a second, third and fourth place finish on Sunday proved two things:
The team has found something in both divisions at the 1.0-mile oval. And, they’re still in championship form carried over from the 2015 season.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
