Carl Edwards conquers the “new” Bristol!
Sunday, August 26th, 2007 
By: Drew Hierwarter
For Carl Edwards it was a dream come true. For Kasey Kahne it was a welcome change from being mired in the back of the pack. For Dale Earnhardt, Jr. it was a much needed shot in the points. And for most everybody else it meant a hard earned Sunday off. Saturday night’s Sharpie 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway was many things to many people but in the end it was another example of why this is the hottest ticket in all of sports. The newly repaved Bristol race track in combination with NASCAR’s “new car” and Goodyear’s conservative tire compound, have combined to completely change the tone of this race. Gone are the days of single file parades around and around the formerly one groove half mile. Gone is the rough driving that used to be the only way one could pass another. Gone are the multiple car wrecks that used to slow the action and send the number of caution flag laps into triple digits. Gone are the dozens of damaged and/or destroyed race cars that forced the fabricators and mechanics back at the shop into overtime. All of that was replaced by good, hard, side-by-side racing throughout the field with drivers battling for every position by going high or low or wherever they needed to make the car work and to gain an advantage. Instead of the pace car leading the most laps, its driver only got to work nine times for a total of sixty seven laps. More of those laps came toward the end of the race than at the beginning which saw the field run the first 126 laps before a spin by Johnny Sauter brought out the yellow flag, which is something else we’ve not been used to seeing at Bristol. During Wednesday’s Craftsman Truck Series race, Michael Waltrip said that Bristol was now “. . . different, but still the same.” It certainly was.
Edwards finally assumed the lead with 166 laps to go after a stirring battle with the suddenly dominant Kasey Kahne, and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and he never looked back even though he had to endure five restarts in the last segment of the race.
“The end of the race took about five years off my life, just with the cautions and knowing we were gonna have restart after restart,” said Edwards, “But to win this race is huge.” In victory lane Edwards called it the biggest win of his career and something he has dreamed about since he began racing on the dirt tracks of his home state of Missouri.
For second place finisher Kasey Kahne, it was the cap on his best weekend of the 2007 season. After winning the Busch Pole Award on Friday, and the Food City 250 Busch Grand National race later that night, Kahne dominated the first segment of the Sharpie 500 and led 305 of the 500 laps. Maybe this means that the Gillett-Evernham team has finally shaken the monkey off their backs.
The good news/bad news for Dale Earnhardt, Jr., was that he ran competitively all night and his fifth place finish made for a gain in the points. But Kurt Busch, his nearest rival in the quest to get in the “Chase”, also finished well, ending up right behind Earnhardt in sixth. Five drivers, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards, have now clinched a position in the “Chase for the Championship”, with only two races to go before the the cutoff and the top twelve begin the ten race run for the 2007 Nextel Cup. The series heads next to Fontana, California before returning to the East Coast for a race in Richmond, Virginia. After Richmond, the points for the top twelve will be re-set and “The Chase” is on.