Carl Edwards wins delayed and rain-shortened race at Texas

Carl Edwards will be racing for the Sprint Cup championship at Homestead.

Edwards won Sunday’s rain-delayed and rain-shortened race at Texas Motor Speedway, holding off Joey Logano and Martin Truex Jr. It’s Edwards’ first chance to win a title at Homestead since he lost the title via tiebreaker to Tony Stewart in 2011.

And it’s a bit of rain karma for Edwards as well. He was eliminated from the third round of the Chase last season at Phoenix. That race was called early due to rain and Edwards was left out of the final four to race for the title at Homestead by five points.

Edwards, who led the final 36 laps of the race, took the lead off what was the race’s final round of pit stops on lap 257. He beat out Truex and Logano and then drove away from the two as they battled for second place behind him.

The race was called on lap 293 of a scheduled 334 laps because rain hit the speedway once again. The race started nearly six hours late (around 7 p.m. CT) because of showers that hit just before the original start time.

Both Edwards and Jimmie Johnson are now guaranteed to race for the title at Homestead, leaving two spots up for grabs at Phoenix, the season’s penultimate race.

Logano dominated much of the race and led 178 laps. But he lost the lead on a set of green-flag pit stops and never got it back. He was being challenged by Truex, who dove to Logano’s inside in turns 3 and 4 before hitting pit road. The move meant Logano had to drive around the track an extra lap on worn tires compared to Truex (and Edwards) and Logano reemerged to the race in third.

“We just lost our track position on a green-flag cycle and got our balance off a little bit,” Logano said. “We got it fixed and got it going and had a good restart at the end to get back to second but it seemed like we needed maybe five or 10 more laps to try to catch [Edwards] there. We were making up about three-tenths [of a second] a lap when the caution came out.”

Kevin Harvick finished sixth after having a run-in with Austin Dillon on lap 261. It appeared Dillon’s car checked up and Harvick as Harvick was close behind. Harvick’s car made contact with Dillon’s and sent it into the wall.

Dillon felt Harvick initiated the contact and crash and called back to when Harvick made a reference to how he and his brother Ty were spoiled in a 2013 Truck Series race at Martinsville.

“I mean, he is tucked down to my door tighter than anybody did all night,” Dillon said. “He knew how tight he was on my door and that is why I got tight and slid up in front of him. He didn’t check [up], but he had the opportunity to. He didn’t like it that the silver spoon kid was out-running him tonight.”

Here’s how the Chase drivers stand with one race to go in the third round. If a Chase driver wins at Phoenix, the Chase driver with the most points who didn’t win in the round gets the final spot.

Carl Edwards WON AT TEXAS
Jimmie Johnson WON AT MARTINSVILLE
Joey Logano, 4,074 points
Kyle Busch, 4,074
Matt Kenseth, 4,073
Denny Hamlin, 4,072
Kevin Harvick, 4,056
Kurt Busch, 4,040

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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