Edwards stole headlines, but others had moments

Given the precedent Kevin Harvick set in winning the Busch Series championship in 2006, his was a hard act to follow.

Along came Carl Edwards in 2007, with a performance that was almost as dominant as Harvick's had been. In fact, until a series of late-season misfortunes narrowed his points lead to 618, Edwards threatened to exceed Harvick's final margin of 824 points.

In the final year of competition under Anheuser-Busch sponsorship, Edwards, the 2006 runner-up, built an insurmountable lead in the first half of the season, fueled by back-to-back wins at Bristol and Nashville in the sixth and seventh events and by consecutive victories at Dover and Nashville in races No. 14 and 15.

With a sizable working margin throughout the season, Edwards was able to clinch the championship with an 11th-place finish at Texas in the 33rd of 35 Busch Series races (watch video).

Edwards and the series title sponsor share something in common -- they're both from Missouri. Consequently, it was gratifying to the Roush Fenway Racing driver to win the last championship before Nationwide Insurance assumes sponsorship of the series next year.

"It was pretty neat," Edwards said. "They're a company that's close to home for me. I think a lot of people don't even realize that the Busch Series is Busch beer. It's so synonymous, Anheuser-Busch and the series. It's pretty cool, and it's neat to win the last one. Those folks have done so much for auto racing."

Appropriately, 2007 was a year of milestones in the series, and not all involved Edwards. Harvick won six times in 26 appearances to increase his career victory total to 32, second all-time behind Mark Martin's 47.

Jeff Burton and Scott Wimmer shared the seat of the No. 29 Chevrolet and delivered the owners' championship to Richard Childress Racing. Burton won five races in the process, including a thrilling side-by-side duel with Kyle Busch at Las Vegas (watch video).

Busch won four times and narrowly missed a couple of unique achievements. He captured the rain-delayed Winn Dixie 250 at Daytona and ran second to Jamie McMurray by .005 seconds in the Pepsi 400, bringing him within an eyelash of becoming the first driver to win a Busch Series and Nextel Cup race on the same day.

Busch's win at Phoenix in the next-to-last race of the year came after he had claimed victory in a Craftsman Truck Series event the night before, but he finished eighth in the Cup race on Sunday, failing in his attempt to become the first driver to sweep all three events in NASCAR's top three series at the same track on the same weekend.

Jason Keller made history, too, when he took the green flag at Lowe's Motor Speedway to start his 418th Busch race and surpass Tommy Houston, whom he had tied a week earlier at Kansas, for most starts in series history. Keller finished the season with 422 career Busch races (watch video).

It was also a year for first-time winners in the series. Juan Montoya triumphed at Mexico City in a controversial finish in which the heralded rookie performed a bump-and-run on Ganassi teammate Scott Pruett (watch video). Aric Almirola got credit for his first win at Milwaukee, though late-arriving Denny Hamlin finished the race (watch video).

David Reutimann grabbed his first series win in a dominating performance at Memphis (watch video), and Stephen Leicht took the checkered flag for the first time at Kentucky Speedway (watch video).

But Edwards dominated the headlines as well as the competition. The bad news for his fellow drivers is that Edwards will race for the championship in 2008 -- perhaps for the final time, as NASCAR contemplates scoring changes that might eliminate Cup regulars for the title picture.

Edwards' approach will change next year, however. There won't be as much back-and-forth between Cup and Busch events.

"I think next year the plan is to focus more on the Cup car -- assuming everything's going well with the Busch car -- and just leave it up to Matt McCall or John Andretti or whoever ends up doing the driving for practice and qualifying -- just leave it up to them," Edwards said.

"We're going to let someone else qualify [the Busch car] and spend more time staying there with the Cup car. It turned out that some of the best races we had were the ones where those guys had set the car up, and I'd just show up and drive it.

"We've always felt like we had to rush, rush, rush. Now I think we're just going to go have some fun with it."