HOMESTEAD, FL – NOVEMBER 20: Carl Edwards, driver of the #19 ARRIS Toyota, leads a pack of cars during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 20, 2016 in Homestead, Florida. Photo by Chris Trotman/Getty Images
In his rear-view mirror, Carl Edwards saw his shot at the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship dissolving.
On a restart with ten laps to go in the Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, with the title on the line, Joey Logano shot deep to the inside in an attempt to pass Edwards for the lead among the championship contenders. Edwards reacted quickly and decisively, turning his car to the left in an attempt to block Logano.
Logano didn’t lift, and chaos ensued.
Logano shoved Edwards into the inside wall. Edwards’ Toyota bounced across the track, was hit hard by Kasey Kahne and slammed into the outside wall.
Edwards’ championship chances were gone in that fiery instant.
The biggest wreck – at least in its importance – of the NASCAR season ultimately involved nine cars and caused a red flag of 31 minutes and nine seconds as track workers cleared the mess.
Edwards, so close to winning his first Sprint Cup championship after leading 47 laps, refused to take an ambulance ride to the infield care center, instead choosing to make the long, sad walk. Along the way, he stopped at Logano’s pit and talked to Logano crew chief Todd Gordon and other members of the team.
“It didn’t work out,” Edwards said later. “This is life. I just risked too much. I had to push it. I couldn’t go to bed tonight and think that I gave him (Logano) that lane.
“Joey just timed it perfectly. He moved down. I thought I could feel him a little and I just thought – I was probably a little optimistic – I could clear him or force him to lift.”
Edwards said he stopped by the No. 22 pit to tell Gordon the accident was “just racing in my opinion and that’s hard racing, and I wished them luck.”
Edwards said he offered no apologies for the incident. He described the responsibility as “shared” – in other words, two drivers racing for the same space.
Edwards’ smashed car didn’t finish the race. He wound up fourth of the four Championship 4 competitors.
Edwards said the caution that set up the restart and the crash “was very, very frustrating. I felt like that was our race and our championship, but, hey, this is how racing goes.”
The caution was caused by Dylan Lupton’s spin in turn two.
“I don’t know what the caution was for,” Edwards said. “I really hope it was something that we needed to have a caution for because that was really – that was going really well.”
Edwards also lost the championship in tough fashion in 2011 at Homestead when Tony Stewart won on a tiebreaker.