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HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Carl Edwards' 2016 season and his chance at championship redemption ended with a walk instead of a drive.
After emerging from the heavy wreck that left his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 Toyota backward and crumpled against the Turn 1 wall, Edwards -- physically unhurt but smarting instead with disappointment -- eschewed the customary ambulance ride to the infield care center for a purposeful jaunt back toward pit road.
"I had a lot of thoughts on that walk," Edwards said, his title hopes dashed. "That was -- just it's hard to -- you put so much into this and so many people push so hard and you don't get opportunities like this very often, so I just hope that pretty quickly I can get over the frustration and look at this for what it is."
WATCH: Edwards: 'That's just racing'
A dicey restart on the 257th of 268 laps of Sunday's season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 denied breakthrough championships for both Edwards and Joey Logano at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Contact with Logano's Team Penske No. 22 Ford sent Edwards' car hard into the inside wall, triggering a major pileup that left Edwards with a 34th-place result. Logano continued on with slight damage and wound up fourth, the top Chase driver behind race winner and newly crowned seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson.
Edwards had restarted second alongside race leader Kyle Larson with Logano lined up third behind him. When Logano pointed his car to the inside lane, Edwards moved to block his advances, both cars dipping toward the track apron. Neither driver budged, and Edwards' car took the brunt of their coming-together.
Edwards dismounted and walked. His first stop along the path was a visit to the No. 22 pit box to offer his side of the incident to Todd Gordon, Logano's crew chief. Gordon said he had been tipped off by team owner Roger Penske that Edwards' intentions were amicable. After their brief discussion, the veteran crew chief said his estimation of Edwards had only grown.
"That's a stand-up guy right there," Gordon said. "That's a stand-up, hard-bones racer. Came up, shook my hand and said, 'You know what, guys. That's hard racing. I didn't realize he was that far inside of me,' and he told me, 'with your short-run speed, I needed to block.' So he said race hard, and that's just a stand-up guy. I've earned a lot of respect for Carl today. I respect him a lot, but I don't know that there's many guys who would do that."
Said Edwards: "I just wanted to make sure that they knew and they could tell Joey -- I don't know if Joey cares or not; I assume he does -- but I just wanted to make sure he knew that was just racing in my opinion and that's hard racing and I wished them luck."
Logano fell to eighth after his run-in with Edwards, lost no additional ground in a pit stop, but was unable to overtake Johnson's surge on the two restarts that followed. He also chalked up his fateful contest with Edwards to the heat of competition, saying that he appreciated his gesture to talk with his No. 22 pit crew.
"Carl's a hard racer and he knows what we're racing for and knows why we do that," said Logano, who also fell short in the Championship 4 finale two years ago. "I'd like to talk to him personally because I think it's cool that he understands it. I mean, it hurt both of us, right? It wasn't like I was trying to spin him out. I was underneath him and we were just chasing him down the race track. I don't blame him for running the block. That's for the championship. Just didn't make it happen."
Edwards led 47 laps in what represented his best chance to win a NASCAR premier series title since his 2011 loss on a tiebreaker to Tony Stewart, who retired from full-time competition after Sunday's 400-miler. Instead of punctuating his journey through the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs this year with his patented backflip celebration, Edwards spent much of the late-race red flag by sheepishly grinning through interviews and then shaking hands with crew chief Dave Rogers and the rest of his No. 19 crew as he headed into the offseason.
The walk wasn't the winning drive that Edwards wanted, but Rogers said his team had nothing to lament.
"I thought that we played the game like a champion would play it," Rogers said. "We set our goal to go home with no regrets, and we're going home with no regrets. That goal's accomplished. We're going home a little short of the championship, but I think they knew we were here tonight."