ALL TITLE STORIES: Johnson | Logano | Busch
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of four stories examining why each driver could win the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. Coming Thursday: Why Kyle Busch will win the 2016 championship
Carl Edwards will win the title because …
Homestead-Miami Speedway is his best track.
The hard(er) part is over — Edwards survived the first nine races of the Chase, outlasting 12 other drivers as the field was narrowed from 16 to our Championship 4. Now he just needs to come out on top at Homestead, and he’s the driver best positioned to do so, given his history at the 1.5-mile facility.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver has a sterling 9.2 average finish with two wins at the track, and his 568 career laps led are tops among all active drivers, in the Championship 4 or otherwise.
His three 2016 wins are the most he’s had since his nine wins in 2008, a year in which he swept three of the last four to close it out, including a dominant Homestead win.
Oh, and remember how close he was to winning the title in 2011, matching eventual champion Tony Stewart on points only to lose via tiebreaker? There’s no way he lets this slip away from him again.