Carl Edwards thought he had a shot at the win.
With the laps winding down, Edwards nursed his fuel mileage and watched surrounding top-10 drivers pit for gas. He thought he might be the one closest to the front who could push through to the end, but he was wrong and finished second.
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The race had been marred by cautions — 11 for 53 laps — as drivers tried to figure out the newly paved track with the slightly altered Turns 1 and 2 combined with a lower downforce car they’d only run once. It turned into a fuel-mileage showdown.
Edwards had not led a lap all race, but there he sat in second on the final lap. After trailing Brad Keselowski by more than nine seconds at one point, he suddenly loomed on the leader’s bumper.
He made his move, thinking Keselowski was running out of fuel, then watched as Keselowski held on for the win.
Did he think he had it?
“I already had things bought and I knew what I was going to play on that juke box (the winner gets),” he said. “I had the whole thing figured out. We'd won the race. I was pretty sure we were going to win it. That's tough.
“But that's the way it goes, man. … everyone, everyone that we race against, these are the best in the world, and they always have an ability to pull something out, so they surprised me tonight."
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As for the racing itself, Edwards said his car drove quite a bit differently than it did during practice.
“I felt like things changed a lot and throughout the night, two tires and four tires and adjustments were — it was really hard for me,” he said. “I don't know how everybody else dealt with it, but it was hard for me to get the car to do what I wanted it to do. It was very difficult to drive. I think that's where you see a lot of the trouble.”
He agreed with third-place finisher Ryan Newman, who said, “I think everybody had a hard getting through Turn 3. It's kind of a design aspect of the racetrack.”
Edwards said while the entry was tough, it did actually have a positive impact.
“What Ryan talked about, that flat Turn 3 entry and how tough that is, I think that kind of makes up for the repave a little bit,” he said. “…there's something out there that shakes the field up a little bit, and that's good.”