Thursday, March 10, 2011
Roush Fenway Racing driver Carl Edwards, who qualified third, won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series 2011 Kobalt Tools 400 held on Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. This became his first Sprint Cup win of the season. Throughout the course of the race there were seven cautions and 22 lead changes among 15 different drivers.
Before the final pit stops, Tony Stewart was first, but after the stops concluded, Stewart fell to third as Edwards became the leader. Edwards maintained the lead to win the race, while Stewart finished in the second position. Juan Pablo Montoya took third, ahead of Marcos Ambrose in fourth. Ryan Newman managed the fifth position, after starting eighth on the grid. Martin Truex, Jr., from the Michael Waltrip Racing, clinched the sixth position. Denny Hamlin followed Truex in seventh, while Dale Earnhardt, Jr. could only manage eighth.
Kurt Busch, and Brian Vickers rounded out the top ten finishers in the race. After doing his victory lap, Edwards commented, “It means a lot coming off of Phoenix. I went home last week and I had no clue, I just didn’t know how things were going to go from there. You don’t get a good race car like that very often, but we had another one today.” Afterward, Stewart described his frustration by finishing second, “We had the fastest thing on the planet today and we just gave it away. It kills me to throw away a race like that.” Following the race, Stewart became Drivers’ Championship leader with 113 points. Next, Kurt Busch was second also with 113, seven points ahead of Edwards and Montoya. Newman and Paul Meanrd was placed fifth and sixth with 103 and 96 points. Truex, Hamlin, A. J. Allmendinger, and Earnhardt rounded out the top-ten point positions.
The 2011 season will continue on March 20, 2011 at Bristol Motor Speedway for the 2011 Jeff Byrd 500. The race will be televised in the US on Fox at 1:00 p.m. EST.