Edwards surprises himself with career-best road finish (cont'd)

Edwards spent the day racing: the track, the weather -- another ugly band of thunderstorms began to threaten the track in the closing laps -- and the competition, particularly Kyle Busch. Edwards was sixth on the final restart with 17 laps to go, but quickly caught Juan Montoya and teammate Greg Biffle, putting him right behind Busch. When Busch slipped off-line seven laps later, Edwards pulled off the pass for lead.

At that point, he had thoughts of perhaps chasing down the two leaders, but he knew his fuel situation was too close to chance it.

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"I was trying to save for later, but then I saw Tony and Marcos were coming back a little bit -- I got real excited, real greedy -- and I used up a little too much, so then I had to save more at the end," Edwards said. "Man, that's good. That's not a win, but, for me, that's a good run here at Watkins Glen."

After winning nine times in 2008, Edwards has failed to visit Victory Lane this season, and breaking through at Watkins Glen was definitely on his mind. But so was the Chase, and Edwards was fully aware of why he wanted to get around Busch so badly.

"I wanted to win this thing really badly," Edwards said. "One of my goals this year was to win a road course race. But third place, I'll take it. We finished in front of Kyle [Busch], who's 13th in points and that's good for us and to finish behind Marcos and Tony, and close in on them a little bit at the end, that felt good.

"To make ground on 13th, with the races left, that's the mission for the No. 99 team right now. That's all I was thinking about."

Edwards remains sixth in the standings, 203 points ahead of Busch with four more races to go before the Chase field is set. That contrasted with Roush Fenway Racing teammates Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth, who had varying degrees of success.

Biffle, whose average finish at the Glen in six previous starts was 28th, finished a surprisingly strong fifth and leapt over Mark Martin and Kenseth into 10th place in the standings. Kenseth wound up 14th, which allowed Busch to close to within 58 points of the 12th and final spot in the 10-race postseason.