RICHMOND, Va. — The more action, the better in Saturday night’s Federated Auto Parts 400, as far as Carl Edwards is concerned.
“Yeah, I’m hoping for an insane race,” said Edwards, who is clinging to the faintest of hopes of claiming a wild-card spot in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. “I want things to just be off the chart. I want rain delays and oil on the track. I want things to happen.
“I need this race to be insane. I need people running out of fuel and crazy cautions and four-wide down in Turn 1. That’s what I need, and I’ll take whatever I can get.”
An engine failure last Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway put Edwards in a tenuous position. Not only must he win Saturday’s race at Richmond International Raceway to have any chance of making the Chase, but he also needs both Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon — who are ahead of Edwards by 26 and 14 points, respectively — to experience nothing short of catastrophe.
That’s why Edwards hopes as many bizarre and extraneous factors as possible come into play.
“Somehow, I’ve got to hope for Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon to have bad nights, and we’ve got to win the race, so those are two things that have to happen — I guess three if you count each of them as separate instances,” Edwards said.
“But the only thing I can control is going out to win the race, so I’m going to go try to win the race. I think that we have a car that can do it.”
If Gordon or Busch is in front of Edwards’ No. 99 Ford at the end of the race, Edwards might create some insanity of his own.
“If Kyle and Jeff are in the positions they need to be, I would not want to be in front of our 99 car at the end of this race if it meant the win,” Edwards said. “We have to win, and that’s all there is to it.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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