Edwards goes another year without a championship title

Tony Stewart's car racing around a track.
Credit to the Freewheeling Daredevil on Flickr.

In 2004, the Chase for the Championship was instituted to make the NASCAR Sprint Cup more interesting. It served its purpose as best as it could in the 2011 Sprint Cup Series. One of the most exciting Sprint Cup Series ended in a comeback from 9th place to 1st in just ten races.

To lose what could have been your first Championship win in a tiebreaker must be heartbreaking. Carl Edwards was in first place coming into the 2011 Sprint Cup Chase for the Championship. In the regular season, he had not won any races. In the Chase, he had only won one race. At the end of the Chase, he finished in second place, falling to 3-time champion Tony Stewart.

When the Chase started, Stewart was in 9th place and his chances of winning were slim. He had been repeatedly left out of the top three drivers in the 2011 predictions. It seemed like all odds were against him until he went on a two-race winning streak. After eight more races and two more first place wins, the itle came down to the last race.

Stewart won the race, followed by Edwards. “To do it [win the race] under the circumstances and pressure we had, I'm very, very proud of that. I can't even remember how many races I've won, but I would have to say under this set of circumstances I've got to believe one of the greatest races of my career,” says Stewart to ESPN. This had put them in a first place tie with 2,403 points each. The tiebreaker went to Stewart, who had five wins compared to Edwards' one win. 

Stewart and Edwards will not soon forget this race. Edwards had his first championship title stripped from him because of a tiebreaker. Stewart was able to come back from 9th place and claim his third championship title when even he didn’t think that he would win.

A rainy race ends the NASCAR season

November 20th was a rainy day at the Ford 400 in Homestead-Miami during the last race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup season. The race was very important for the two top drivers in the season, Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards. They entered the race with nearly the same amount of points, as Stewart was only three points behind Edwards. The race was also had importance for other drivers like Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski, who fought for fifth place in the season.

Stewart had a bad start in the season, but about halfway through; he started winning a lot of races. Edwards had been one of the top drivers the whole season. Stewart won the three more points that he needed to tie Edwards at the Homestead-Miami race. Stewart gained the title even though they were tied, because he had more wins (five as opposed to one that Edwards had). “I drove to the edge and beyond, and that is all I had. Truly, we’ve never run any better than this,” stated Edwards to Sacbee.com.

Instead of being disappointed about not winning, he is looking forward to next year’s opportunity to win his first championship. “It would be crushing, if we didn’t get to go race next year. I am being 100 percent, completely honest with you, I am more excited about next year than I have ever been about going into the next season,” he said.

Johnson, who before this season has never ended below the top five, had a horrible race that made Keselowski snatch fifth place away from him. Due to the rain, Johnson’s engine started having problems. He ended in sixth season place with 2304 points behind Keselowski’s 2319. “It is disappointing… Our cars are running really fast, even today our car was plenty fast but we just had some unfortunate racing situations happen and it took us out of it,” Johnson said to Scenedaily.com.

Finishing in fifth place, Keselowksi and his team believes that, they can win a championship in the near future. "You look at the No. 14 (Tony Stewart) and the No. 99 (Carl Edwards) and they just had a lot of speed… If we can get a little more speed in our cars, I feel like we can go out there and win a championship," he said to NASCAR.com.