Carl Edwards took the #19 Joe Gibbs Toyota to his second win of the season in the prestigious Bojangles' Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Sunday evening. This was the first Labor Day eve running of the historic race since 2003; the tradition goes all the way back to 1950. Edwards was one of the few not running a throwback paint scheme to celebrate the Southern 500's return to its traditional date. The 367-lap race featured 18 cautions which stretched it over 4 hours long, about the same length as NASCAR's longest race, the Coca-Cola 600.
The first caution came a few laps in when the #25 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet of Chase Elliott, making his fifth and final Cup start of the year before moving full-time to the series next year to replace Jeff Gordon, collided with the #35 Front Row Motorsports Ford of Cole Whitt, damaging the front of Whitt's car. Whitt's teammate Brett Moffitt (#34) also got a piece of the wreck. Whitt went to the garage and was soon done for the evening. Some laps later, Mike Bliss hit the wall with his #33 Chevrolet, leaving a huge Darlington Stripe along the wall. Jimmie Johnson spun the #48 Chevrolet before the halfway mark, but got back going and worked his way into the top ten. Edwards' teammate Kyle Busch in the #18 Toyota also had a run-in with the #16 Ford of Greg Biffle which brought out a caution. Trevor Bayne (#6), Biffle's teammate, was involved in multiple incidents including a crash with the #55 Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota of David Ragan (who later brought out another caution when he hit the wall). Danica Patrick (#10) sustained heavy damage from a wall hit around lap 200, as did third Roush driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (#17) a few laps after the ensuing restart.
Because of the high amount of cautions, some teams reported being low on tires, although no crews completely ran out. Hendrick drivers Kasey Kahne (#5) and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (#88) had tires going down just past halfway. Joey Logano reported a tire going down on his #22 Team Penske Ford, which he pitted to fix. Jeff Gordon (#24) and Tony Stewart (#14) had some nice runs in the lead.
Logano's teammate Brad Keselowski (#2) led 196 of 367 laps, and clearly had the dominant car after taking it to the pole on Saturday. On lap 327, Tony Stewart's driver Kurt Busch (#41) spun and dropped from ninth to 29th, but fought his way back into the top ten by the end of the race. Fourth Stewart-Haas driver and defending race winner Kevin Harvick (#4) was challenging Edwards for second place late in the race as Keselowski led. Jeb Burton (#23) brought out the final caution on lap 356 and Harvick lost a few positions as the leaders made their final pit stops. On the restart, Edwards pulled ahead of Keselowski to steal the win.
After the race, Jamie McMurray (#1) and Ryan Newman (#31) came close to clinching Chase spots like the 11 wins so far this year have, while Kyle Busch, a four-time winner after missing the first 11 races of the season, was reported to have clinched. The four or five Chase spots to be determined by points will be set next Saturday evening in the regular season finale in Richmond, Virginia.
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