OK, let’s just get these two things out of the way at the outset so we can get on with the main story. #1 Jimmie Johnson didn’t win the Kobalt Tools 500. Hooray for the other guy, who in this case was Kurt Busch. #2 Scott Speed didn’t win either, but he had a shot. He’s due any week now.
Now that I’ve got my weekly Johnson & Speed comments out of the way, the Kobalt Tools 500 was really something, wasn’t it? Kurt Busch won the second race in Atlanta in a row. Maybe he should petition NASCAR to hold more Cup races in Hotlanta. Or maybe he should send Carl Edwards a nice fruit basket.
Not to take anything away from Busch, but it was Edwards’ tizzy fit against Brad Keselowski that really set up the win. In summary: Keselowski and Edwards had a little fender bender… at 200 mph… last April at Talladega. They had another… incident… in lap 40 of this week’s race. Apparently, twice just wasn’t enough for Edwards, who set his Roush Fenway Racing Ford on ramming speed and got a little payback with just 2 laps left to go in the Kobalt Tools 500.
That crash extended the race beyond the planned 325 laps and got Edwards kicked off the track. Of course, neither Keselowski nor Edwards nor Busch had anything to do with the seven car pileup in what would have been the final lap. That extended the race even further and set up the first green – white – checkered finish of the season. By the time that mess was cleaned up and the race restarted, the 325 lap Kobalt Tools 500 had turned into the 341 lap Kobalt Tools 525.
