Monticello — Carl Edwards made the trip from Infineon Raceway in California worthwhile on Saturday night, winning the Nationwide Series race at the Milwaukee Mile.
Edwards left Infineon earlier in the day, where he practiced his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series car, to race at Milwaukee. Having to start at the rear of the field, Edwards tiptoed through the field early in the race.
After Kyle Busch, led for numerous laps, Edwards chased him down and made the pass for the lead on lap 205 of the 250-lap race.
Despite two caution periods in the final 50 laps, Edwards easily pulled away to his first Nationwide victory of the season. He also repeated as the
2008 Milwaukee race winner.
"It seems like almost every week, we're getting faster and faster,"
Edwards said. "It's really cool to get that first win. Hopefully, it kicks off the rest of the season like it did last year."
Edwards' 2008 win at Milwaukee kicked off an impressive second-half run where he won seven of the final 19 races. Can he do it again this season?
"We could go win every race," Edwards continued. "That's how we try to approach them. As good as last season ended, it didn't get good until a year ago tonight. All my guys are aware of that, I was aware of that. People were mentioning that to me as I was getting in the car: ŒHey, do you remember last year?' I thought, ŒBoy, if we could do that again and get it going, there's no reason we can't have the same success.'"
Top-10 leaders after 15 of 35: 1. Kyle Busch-2391, 2. Edwards-2264, 3.
Keselowski-2173, 4. Leffler-2127, 5. Logano-1860, 6. Bliss-1745, 7.
Gaughan-1744, 8. Allgaier-1740, 9. Keller-1716, 10. S. Wallace-1693