Edwards and Stewart Leave Richmond Unhappy at BetLM

RICHMOND, Va. (NASCAR /Newsfeed) – Not even a meet­ing with NASCAR offi­cials helped Carl Edwards under­stand why he was given a penalty at Rich­mond Inter­na­tional Raceway.

“We had to just agree to dis­agree and that’s the way it is,” Edwards said.

In con­trast, Tony Stew­art knew exactly why he lost Sat­ur­day night’s race.

“We did every­thing we could to throw it away, it got taken away,” the defend­ing Sprint Cup cham­pion said. “I’m pretty ticked off about it.”

Both dri­vers were less than pleased when they left Rich­mond, where late drama spiced up what had been yet another bland NASCAR race. There were just three cau­tions – one was a NASCAR-planned com­pe­ti­tion – through the first 310 laps and none had much impact on the race.

That changed when Jeff Bur­ton smacked the wall, leav­ing behind debris that brought out the yel­low with 89 laps remain­ing. It was Stew­art and Edwards on the front row for the restart, and both believed they were the leader.

Edwards sailed away at the green flag, and was imme­di­ately penal­ized for jump­ing the restart and pass­ing the leader before it was permitted.

What fol­lowed was a heated con­fronta­tion between crew chief Bob Osborne and the NASCAR offi­cial assigned to his pit stall, and a lengthy dis­cus­sion on the team radio between Edwards and Osborne as they tried to fig­ure out exactly what happened.

Edwards had been told by his spot­ter he was the leader, and the spot­ter said that infor­ma­tion came from NASCAR. And the leader­board backed it up, as Edwards was shown in first place. So when he was lined up on the out­side of the track, Edwards said he fig­ured NASCAR had made a mis­take, and he made a split-second deci­sion to try to get the best restart he could.

This part is not in dis­pute: Replays clearly showed Edwards rock­eted past Stew­art and had cleared him before reach­ing the offi­cial restart zone.

And that’s against the rules, no mat­ter who was lead­ing the race.

“At the end of the day, it comes down to jump­ing the restart and that’s pretty straight­for­ward,” Osborne said. “Our issue was the con­fu­sion about who was the leader and who wasn’t the leader.”

But why was Edwards being shown as the leader? NASCAR vice pres­i­dent of com­pe­ti­tion Robin Pem­ber­ton said Edwards had tripped the tim­ing and scor­ing when he crossed the line ahead of Stew­art under cau­tion while clean­ing his tires.

“What you’ve got to under­stand is the elec­tron­ics,” Pem­ber­ton said. “When the transpon­der crosses the start/finish line – when Carl was scrub­bing his tires, he beat (Stew­art) to the line – so that instan­ta­neously puts him up top.

“It hap­pens all the time, but these cir­cum­stances don’t stack on top of it. That put him up on top of the board just because he was com­ing to the line with one to go.”

The penalty dropped Edwards to 15th. He briefly fell a lap down, and wound up fin­ish­ing 10th. It was a dis­ap­point­ment con­sid­er­ing Edwards led a race-high 206 laps and is still seek­ing his first win of the sea­son. And it didn’t seem to mat­ter what NASCAR’s expla­na­tion was, Edwards believed he had a win taken away from him.

“They run the sport and they do the best job they can, and I drive a race car and do the very best job I can,” said Edwards, who took a few moments to com­pose him­self after leav­ing the meet­ing with NASCAR.

“I’d rather not say what was said in there. This whole thing is very frus­trat­ing. I don’t feel like we did the wrong thing.”

Stew­art wasn’t any hap­pier about his race, which ended with a third-place fin­ish to Kyle Busch.

Stew­art had led four times for 118 laps, and was out front when NASCAR called a cau­tion for debris 12 laps from the fin­ish. The lead­ers pit­ted, and Busch beat Stew­art off of pit road, and eas­ily han­dled the cham­pion on the restart.

Stew­art was annoyed with NASCAR over the cau­tion, and his team for the slow pit stop.

“When the cau­tion is for a plas­tic bot­tle on the back­stretch, it’s hard to feel good about los­ing that one,” he said. “And we gave it away on pit road. That’s the best car I’ve had at Rich­mond in a long time. But we’ve got some work to do on pit stops right now. I don’t know what their mal­func­tion was.”

The con­tro­ver­sies – and per­haps Busch win­ning the spring race at Rich­mond for the fourth straight time – are what will be remem­bered from Sat­ur­day night. It’s been a strangely calm stretch of rac­ing for NASCAR, which has not seen a mul­ti­ple car acci­dent since Mar­tinsville a month ago. The races at Cal­i­for­nia, Bris­tol, Texas, Kansas and now Rich­mond were all fairly clean, with long green-flag runs that were short on the aggres­sion and activ­ity fans seem to prefer.

It was thought that Rich­mond might bring a return of the beat­ing and bang­ing of a typ­i­cal Sat­ur­day night short-track race, but it never hap­pened. But as Busch left fol­low­ing his first win of the sea­son, he knew that the final debris cau­tion changed every­thing and that’s all that was important.

“It was a gift,” Busch said of the last cau­tion flag. “I just don’t know where it came from or what it was or any­thing, but it doesn’t matter.”