Notes: Edwards likes tires that push the driver to limit

HAMPTON, Ga. -- There were a number of drivers upset about the tires when the Sprint Cup Series visited Atlanta Motor Speedway in March, prompting Goodyear officials to schedule a pair of tire tests and bring a different compound to the track for Sunday's Pep Boys Auto 500.

But winner Carl Edwards was not one of them.

"I was just glad they didn't screw them up," Edwards said. "I thought they were perfect in the spring. That's just the way I feel. I know a lot of people don't feel that way, but maybe it's because I've got these guys sitting next to me and we've got such great racecars, but I enjoy when you've got to push pedals a lot and move the steering wheel a lot.

"It puts it back in the driver's hand. It's literally like a 500-mile Saturday night dirt-track race. You're driving the whole time. That's fun."

Let the sunshine in

Sunday's race took the green flag at 2:20 p.m. ET, and with no clouds, the late October sun low in the horizon was directly in the drivers' eyes as they tried to navigate Turn 1.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he, for one, is glad this race will be run Labor Day weekend in 2009, especially if that turns out to be a night race.

"We just start the race too late," Junior said. "You can't see going into Turn 1 and how can you race around a corner when you can't see going into it? How are we supposed to hit our marks at 180 mph when you can't see the rest of the corner?

"We need to start the race at [noon] like we are supposed to, quit this 2 o'clock mess and finish these races where you can see going off into the corner. I was getting around the bottom pretty good and once the sun got in my eyes, I couldn't hit my marks because I couldn't see them anymore."

Take out or delivery?

When asked what he meant by his car being "out to lunch," Kyle Busch had a credible explanation.

"The car was terrible on long runs," Busch said. "It would run fine on the short run -- about eight laps or so -- and it was just junk from there on out. We had to get as much ground as we could make up on the start of the run because we would just get run over late in the run."

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Putting a spin on 1,000 starts

Michael Waltrip's 1,000th NASCAR start was an adventure, to say the least. The No. 55 Toyota was one of the fastest cars on the track until Waltrip scraped the wall before the midway point.

Then things came apart in a hurry, literally. Waltrip was responsible directly or indirectly for at least three cautions, beginning with his Turn 2 accident on Lap 209, which tore a huge hole in the bodywork over the right-rear tire. After the crew repaired the damage and sent him back on the track, Waltrip had an identical incident 90 laps later, this time on the backstretch. A later debris caution was believed to be the result of sheet metal peeling away from Waltrip's damaged car.

Waltrip eventually wound up 37th, eight laps down to the eventual winner.